


How to Train your Mafia

by qwanderer



Series: Glimpses of the Half-Dragon Universe [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Genderfluid Character, Nonbinary Character, Organized Crime, Other, mentions of human trafficking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 22:32:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11518857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: After the war, Chivaka West finds herself torn between rejecting the Movrekt culture she came from, and helping the people she once called family. There is so much they taught her that she is only now realizing is wrong, foul and harmful. There is so much she needs to relearn in order to live whatever life she ends up wanting. And what she wants? That’s something she has to figure out too.





	How to Train your Mafia

**Author's Note:**

> This is the full text of my novella, How to Train your Mafia. It comes after The Red Glade Peacemakers chronologically, but was written to stand alone.

As Chivaka passed by the new server room, she could hear that it was brimming with energy, humming with the compelling vibrations of people, electricity, and magic. 

She poked her head into the room, and saw that Eben and a couple of the other Copper Eye half-dragons were busy at the keyboards. The other two were arguing with each other and with a couple of slightly worse-for-wear rubber ducks, but Eben was just humming to himself, wiggling a little as he typed. 

He looked up as she stepped into the room, and smiled. He always seemed to know when she was around. 

“Come to see how the database is coming?” he asked. “Hardware’s pretty impressive, but a lot of the work we’re putting in now, I guess you can’t really see.” 

“No, I….” Chivaka wasn’t sure how to explain what she perceived here. “I _feel_ the magic in what you’re doing. I’ve been around computers all my life, but it never occurred to me how magical it all is, what they do, until I started training in magic. Now, I know what magic feels like, and I know there’s power in what you’re doing.” 

He laughed. “I’m not quite there yet myself, I guess,” he told her. “Still feels like I’m pouring a lot of myself into a little tiny box that never gets full.” 

“It’s there,” she reassured him. “In there with the sparks of electricity and all those little tiny parts. They’re filling up with something amazing. It’s disconcerting, actually. All my life, magic has been forbidden for dragons and half-dragons, so we barely recognized the magic humans had created when it was under our noses. It’s so different from the old stories about magic, so different from what we’d been taught.” 

Eben shrugged. “Magic’s just sitting down with the universe and having a little chat. Finding a way to make the fabric of reality sit up and listen. This has its own language, just like the old spells Isis knows, and the ones from the stories.” 

“But this, it’s all so tiny and intricate. So controlled.” 

Eben snorted with laughter. “Tell that to the rubber ducks,” he said. 

“What?” Chivaka asked, frowning. 

“Rui and Kalila are on the trail of a nasty bug in the database code, so stick around and you’ll see soon enough,” Eben said with a wild twinkle in his eye. 

Chivaka just shook her head, not sure she wanted to know. “Anyhow, you know what I mean. It’s all so… _focused._ So many of the stories we hear about how spells were used in the old wars are about great big plumes of fire, enormous waves of water. They could do great things with it, but they couldn’t do _this._ ” 

“I don’t think they really _wanted_ to,” Eben replied. “Or didn’t imagine it was possible.” 

“So do you think it’s possible?” Chivaka asked him. “Doing things like this with the dragon half of magic? Not just with earth and air, silicon and waves, but with water and fire? Building spells that cast themselves over and over, that react to whoever’s using them in complex ways, past that person’s ability as a caster? Do you think it’s possible to—to _program fire_?” 

“I think so,” Eben replied, quiet and intense, hands stilled on the keyboard. “We locked ourselves away from magic when we signed the treaty, your people and mine. And for hundreds of years, humans took the world in their hands and put everything they had into shaping it.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “We’re just a _little_ behind.” 

“Do you think we could catch up? Do you think we could figure it out? Build something?” 

Their eyes locked, and, oh, great Bahamut, when did he get so close, when had _she_ stepped so close, because his chair hadn’t moved but here he was, close enough that she could see the little flecks of amber in his deep, dark brown eyes, and the hints of green glow under that. 

She knew he wanted her. He’d said as much. But she didn’t…. 

Across the room, the muttered conversation turned to startled, angry swears, and a rubber duck flew through the air to smack against the wall with a squeak, a few new claw punctures in its cheery yellow surface. 

Chivaka jumped, and tore herself away from the paralyzed… _something_ she’d been trapped in. “I have to go,” she told Eben. She had to get away from his orbit, from the way he always pulled her closer, beckoned her towards the kind of relationship she was almost sure she didn’t want. 

_Almost_ sure. 

* * *

There was so much that humans could do with their magic, their technology, and there was so much that Chivaka needed to do. 

She needed to find the trick to speaking to her people, to the Movrekt, before they went any farther in their seeming quest to destroy themselves. They were part of the universe, right? So she should be able to find magic appropriate to the task. 

The Movrekt were all half-dragons now—the last of their true dragon lords had died in the war—but they still held themselves above humans, above their own human sides. They’d listen better to something based in the Bahamutic elements of water and fire. But all she knew how to do with that now was flash and fear. 

It served its purpose. It got their attention. But it couldn’t communicate anything real. It wouldn’t save the Movrekt from themselves. 

It wouldn’t save the life of her uncle Padric. 

* * *

But shock and awe had their purposes, and Chivaka had her duties. 

It was time to gear up. 

Chivaka West was small, feminine, pale-on-pale, and it would have been easy for her to appear soft. But today, she didn’t want that. Today was a leather jacket sort of day. 

The ideal Movrekt half-dragon was ambitious, driven, prone to violence. Chivaka had been taught from her earliest childhood that dragons, and therefore half-dragons such as herself, were hunters by nature, and that humans were their natural prey. 

Which was unutterably stupid, of course. 

Chivaka had grown up in a Movrekt organization ruled by the late Lord Harkesh. She served the new Lady Harkesh now, and Lady Ezri Va Harkesh was an entirely different beast. With luck, the Movrekt would become a different beast as well. 

Ezri was meeting with the other House lords today, and she’d need Chivaka there for protection. So Chivaka armored up. Jeans, long sleeves, shoulder holsters and the handguns that went in them, and finally, her leather jacket. 

It always took her right back to the Movrekt mindset, right back to training, that heavy old leather jacket that had once been her mother’s. It wasn’t really any protection, practically speaking, but it made her feel ready to wade into the fray. Follow the beat of the war drums without question. 

As competent and brave as Ezri was, she wasn’t familiar with the ways of the Movrekt, hadn’t been brainwashed with their ideals as a child. 

It was bad for her survival, not to know when or how they’d strike at her next. But it was good, for someone trying to think outside the box, change the way the Movrekt worked. 

Chivaka was loyal to Ezri and her family, the reborn House Harkesh, because they’d saved her from a vicious cycle, from the brutal assumptions of Movrekt philosophy. 

She wanted to do the same for the rest of her people. 

For her own House. For her uncle, Padric West. For him, in particular, she was running out of time. 

The two women needed all the advantages they could get in appearing to be the ones in charge. Ezri’s command was all that was stopping the other Movrekt nobles from executing her uncle and the others like him, any Movrekt soldier that would never fully recover from injuries received in the recent war. 

Ezri Va Harkesh was the rightful heir to House Harkesh, the First House. She was the closest living relative to Nash Harkesh, the Reaper, the pureblood dragon who had controlled the Movrekt organization for time immemorial. 

But of course, it could hardly be that simple. 

Nash’s old office was huge and cold and imposing, and Chivaka would always be a bit intimidated by it, by the thought of who had once occupied it. They used the space because it would have the same effect on any Movrekt soldier. But just as Chivaka did not allow that to cow her, neither did the most defiant of the nobles. 

Destan Ael, of course, was chief among them. Even after Chivaka had shot him a few months ago, he continued to be one of their most vocal opponents. And today was proving no exception. 

“Who are you to be head of House Harkesh?” he demanded. “Daughter to that pacifist traitor, Isis? She only married to weaken our ranks. To pull apart the Brothers Harkesh. And we will not let you do the same.” 

He was big, blond, and imposing. Chivaka didn’t react. 

Chivaka was Ezri’s second, her lieutenant, and part of her job was to stand between Ezri and all the vitriol that the riled-up lords of the old houses could hurl at the new head of House Harkesh, the First House. 

This time last year, Chivaka had been little more than a foot soldier and an asset to her House. The most intimidating thing she could think of then was being asked to dance with Nash’s son, then-heir to House Harkesh. 

Now she stood before an array of all the most hostile lords, and a handful of ladies, of the Movrekt houses, in front of the new head of the First House, defying them. Defying the conventions and traditions that had built the Movrekt. 

“I am the daughter of one of the Brothers Harkesh,” Ezri said, cold and calm, “the Reaper’s niece, and more than that, I am the only person with the courage and initiative to step up, to fill the void that Nash and his children left behind.” 

“Courage. Initiative. They don’t make you a Movrekt,” Destan spat. “No one as soft, as optimistic, as _willfully ignorant_ as you could ever truly be the head of House Harkesh! And you won’t last long, you won’t keep your position as First House if you don’t cull the weaklings, as we always have! As Nash would have done!” 

Chivaka checked her sidearms automatically as Destan took a step forward, found them ready and loaded as always. 

Lady Albastru rolled her eyes. She clearly wasn’t entirely on board with Destan’s blustering. Good. Chivaka knew that House Albastru was a good prospect right now, in Ezri’s one-on-one negotiations. Ezri was eager to worm her way into business with House Albastru’s drug distribution networks as soon as possible. 

The men in front of them hissed and yelled, but they only had the courage to speak like this when all of them stood together in a mob. When Ezri met them in the trailer that served as her own private office, they were more respectful. But they were also less honest about their intent. 

Ezri needed to meet them here, on Movrekt ground, if she wanted to know what was bubbling under the surface. Who might act because their fellow nobles expected it of them. 

Chivaka knew that they were walking a narrow line, striking a delicate balance. If they pushed too hard, the Movrekt nobles would lash out in defiance. But they were still riding the wave of Nash Harkesh’s reign of terror, and Nash would never have let disobedience go unremarked. 

They’d been culling. No, that was too polite a word. They’d been killing. After the head of the First House, Ezri Va Harkesh, had expressly forbidden it. 

“Your oh-so-respected Lord Nash ‘culled’ himself right out of any kind of real family,” Ezri reminded them. “He killed his own heir for a ‘weakness’ that was completely imagined.” 

Frost began to form on the marble floor, creeping out towards the gathered lords. Some noticed it, eyeing it warily. Others did not. But then a breeze started up in the closed room, ruffling Chivaka’s straw-pale hair, chilling the audience, but leaving Ezri eerily still, the red sheen of her dark hair untouched. 

Chivaka knew without looking behind her. She knew from the looks in the eyes of their audience. She could tell when Ezri’s eyes glowed red, when she bared her claws. The growl in the Lady Harkesh’s voice told that part of the story, too. 

“You want to be strong? You want to be strong like the old House Harkesh? The old House Harkesh is broken. It is dead. House Harkesh now is me and mine. My mother, Isis of the Red Glade. Gabiya Natikan, the woman whose blade felled Lord Nash, the Reaper himself. Many of Nash’s servants and human contacts are loyal to us now, and for good reason. House Harkesh has at its command the power of the mages who broke and remade the world. There’s no going back. There’s only this question to answer. Do you stand with me, and the new House Harkesh? Or against us?” 

The eyes of the collected lords widened. 

“There will be no culling,” she told them. “No executions of loyal soldiers. You will stop this worthless practice, or you will face the wrath of _my_ House Harkesh!” 

Chivaka knew this was her cue. Without moving, except for a quiet breath as a focus, she reached for the fire. And it sprang up on the floor, chasing the places where the frost had crept, quick as lightning. 

Ezri roared. “Go.” 

They went. Destan, Lady Albastru and a few others kept their appearance of composure, walked instead of ran, but they all went. 

It was a good show. It kept the Movrekt lords from challenging Ezri physically, while they were gathered in their strength like this. But it wouldn’t work every time, despite the little changes Ezri and Chivaka had made since the last time they used it. And it wouldn’t help them get what they ultimately wanted. They were on the defensive, and they knew it. 

They needed to develop a plan for the long term. 

As Chivaka watched Lady Albastru move, pick her way among the mass of the other frightened nobles, she remembered the time when she’d attended one of Nash Harkesh’s famous parties. 

Last year. Had it really only been last year? So much had changed. 

All the nobles had been there. No one had dared slight Nash by refusing his invitation. His son, Prince Mahkai, had asked Chivaka to dance. And an awkward, stilted thing that dance had been. But when Mahkai had left her, he’d snagged the arm of Aetwa Albastru, the daughter and heir of Lady Albastru. 

The Movrekt, as a rule, were stilted and regimented as Chivaka had been. As she still was, in many ways. But she had seen in that dance that Aetwa and Mahkai were anything but. 

Their dance had brought life to the whole ballroom. The other dancers on the floor had seemed to orbit them as if they were twin suns. 

Some people described fighting as being like a dance, but that dance had been like a fight. Mahkai led, and he led well, but Aetwa’s gestured suggestions and raised eyebrows were like commands—or, Chivaka thought, they were dares. 

As Chivaka watched the nobles leave, she fully realized that the Albastru family was led by the woman who had raised Aetwa to have that independent spirit. She was one half-dragon they needed to watch. 

This whole operation was a dangerous prospect in need of careful handling, and they needed to be wary every moment, but some of the Movrekt lords were more dangerous than others, and Lady Albastru more dangerous than most. 

Once the Movrekt lords had gone and the door was closed, Ezri activated the circles of wards she’d worked into the marble floor, and her shoulders slumped immediately. 

Inside this circle, it was just them. Inside this circle, they were Red Glade, part of the peace-loving but fierce group of healers in which Ezri had been raised, or maybe they were Darkhan, like Eben and the other half-dragons they lived with sometimes in the nearby compound, or they were independent and free. They were whoever they wanted to be, without the Movrekt lords breathing down their necks. The war drums were silent. 

Chivaka rubbed at her shoulders through her jacket. It always itched a little, coming out of that paranoid, violence-driven skin she wore when she was Movrekt, when she was Lady Harkesh’s second. 

But then, she hardly knew who she was without all that. Inside the circle, it was still. It was a place between places, a time between times. Chivaka could be anything she wanted, but she had very little idea what she wanted to be, by herself, for herself. 

What she knew was out there, was the mission. They must change the way the Movrekt worked in order to save them. If it took taking over the whole organization piece by piece, then they would do that. But that would take time that many Movrekt soldiers did not have. 

Lady Albastru could be an asset to them, or a serious problem. She had the power, the force of personality, to do what she pleased in her own house, and, Chivaka thought, to take over the whole of the Movrekt, if she’d had a mind to. But she hadn’t, so she must want something else. 

“Talk to Lady Albastru,” Chivaka told Ezri. “If you can find out what she wants and give her enough of it, I’m almost sure she’ll work with you.” 

“I’ll do that,” Ezri agreed. “Chivaka. I’m sorry we haven’t gotten what you wanted out of this whole endeavor yet. We know they’re still killing their own, and I don’t know that we’ll be able to stop them any time soon. The only thing I can think to do for those people is to work faster at what’s working. Gain more influence, more power.” 

Ezri Va Harkesh was a woman who seemed to be fashioned out of darkness and strength when she stood before the Movrekt, skin the color of mahogany and just as finely sculpted, clothes by habit in rich dark reds and purples, tailored not to hide the lines of her body, but to reveal the wiry muscles and the hard stances, the way everything about her said “predator.” The only touches of light color were the whites of eyes, teeth, and claws. 

It was so different from the way her mother, Isis Va, wore the same features—calm, regal, and knowing. In many ways, that loud-broadcast viciousness was an act. But it wouldn’t have fooled the Movrekt lords if it weren’t also true. 

Chivaka was one of the trusted few who got to see Ezri like this, in moments where she stopped to let herself feel, let herself care, let herself be soft. 

“I know you’re doing what you can,” Chivaka reassured. “You just get Lady Albastru on board. We’ll get there.” 

“And meanwhile your people die. I’m sorry about Lira.” 

Lira Viresca had been a good and faithful soldier. She’d fought to her last, or so she’d thought, but she’d woken up to find that a brain injury had left her without her hearing. 

Ezri and her mother had worked hard to save her life, make sure that was all she lost. But it was not to be. 

“I’m sorry, too,” Chivaka told her. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be to spend so much time working to heal someone just to watch them throw it all away.” 

“Pah!” Ezri spat. “Made me wish I’d never trained as a healer.” 

“No,” Chivaka objected. 

“No,” Ezri agreed. “No, I’m glad to be able to help, when people let me.” 

Awkwardly, Chivaka laid a hand on the shoulder of the young Lady Harkesh. 

“We do all we can,” Chivaka assured her. 

“Well, sometimes it’s not enough.” 

It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. There were people whom they were not going to be able to save. 

“They’re not going to stop, are they?” Chivaka asked Ezri, watching the other woman’s bowed head and defeated stance. “The Movrekt lords won’t stop killing their own until we force their hand.” 

Ezri shook her head slowly. “Not in any future that I can see,” she admitted with a dark laugh. “This goes against everything I’ve been taught to believe, as a Red Glade healer. We accept people as they are. We work to save them. We try our best to teach them how to live in harmony. We don’t scare them into acting the way we want.” She laughed again, a little bitterly. “Although I have to admit that it’s a tactic I’m pretty familiar with myself.” 

“It’s how Nash ruled, for a long time,” Chivaka said. “But it doesn’t last forever. Nash fell. You will, too, and soon, unless we find better tactics. Find a way to shift the tides.” 

Ezri groaned, rubbing her temples. “My mother warned me this wouldn’t work,” she gritted out. “And of course I still put myself smack in the middle of it, and dragged you in, too. I’m sorry for that.” 

“No,” said Chivaka. “Don’t be. This is right where I want to be. In the middle of the mess that is the Movrekt. But in a position to _do_ something about it. We just have to find an approach.” 

As much as she hated what they had learned to be, the Movrekt would always be Chivaka’s people on some level. 

The Red Glade had rescued her, had freed her from that, without ever making it seem like her bonds to the Movrekt were unimportant. 

The Movrekt had trained her as a fighter and sent her out to fight, but they’d taught her to value respect, power, positions and deals between families. Set her to strive for power and jockey for position. 

Following orders was not the way to the top, the Red Glade had taught her that. The way to the top was seizing your opportunities, learning from your mistakes, not being afraid to take risks. 

And respect for respect, and kindness for kindness. But that didn’t apply, when dealing with the other great houses of the Movrekt. 

Not yet, at least. But they had a long way to go. 

They got into Ezri’s truck and made their way back to the old Darkhan compound. They didn’t always sleep there—the trailer was serviceable enough for that—but in the past year, they’d both learned to call the compound home, in one way or another. 

Isis Va lived there. Ezri’s mother, the founder of the Red Glade, had, unthinkably, finally settled down, built a home that didn’t have wheels. 

She wasn’t retired or anything, not by a long shot, and both women knew her well enough not to go looking for her in the tiny house that she and her new wife and adopted child shared, back in the woods surrounding the compound. No, at this time of day, she’d be in the old mansion. Probably with the baby strapped to her back, neck deep in her manuscripts. 

The place was bustling. Before the war, the Darkhnit said, it had been nearly abandoned, since it was too big for any one family in the compound, but too public to serve as one of their meeting places for secret dragon business. With the war, they’d needed somewhere to serve as a hospital, a base of operations, a home for visiting Darkhan and Red Glade half-dragons. And that had never really stopped. 

For the past few days, it had been swarming with Copper Eye dragons, who seemed to be all color and energy, filling the space with Eben in his graphic tees doing an impromptu dance, or Rui digging in her Hello Kitty backpack for whatever fidget toy she craved at the moment. They were an eclectic bunch, gathered to the Silver Horn compound from their homes dispersed throughout the country in order to build a server farm in the mansion, and use it to host a database of the combined magical knowledge of Isis and the other Red Glade healers. 

“Passworded, of course,” Eben Keth told them. “I know Isis wants to get this knowledge out there. But I don’t think we’re ready for the Movrekt to have access to it yet.” 

Chivaka snorted at that thought. “I don’t even want to know what the Houses would think of to do with all that power,” she said, shaking her head. “We’d have war all over again, more than likely.” 

“No,” Ezri agreed. “We’re not ready. And even you folks having access to it all… it’s scary. We’re used to all this being Red Glade knowledge, Red Glade secrets. Putting it all out there for the Darkhnit? It’s going to change the world, again.” 

“And we’re all itching to do something with it. Something the world has never seen. The Movrekt spent all those years keeping track of the Silver Horn, watching the Darkhan warrior tradition stagnate. But us? We weren’t sitting still to be kept track of. We were changing, learning. Getting ready.” Eben waggled his eyebrows. “Copper Eye is the sleeping dragon they would have done better not to tickle.” 

Ezri snorted. “You’re also enormous _nerds._ ” 

“Hey, you got the reference,” Eben retorted. “That puts you firmly in the ranks of us nerds.” 

Chivaka shook her head. “I grew up in London in the aughts,” she told them. “From my perspective, knowing Harry Potter isn’t a nerd thing. It’s a cultural requirement.” 

Eben looked at her with glee sparkling in his eyes, but then those eyes went soft, his eyebrows up and just barely drawn together in the middle of his forehead, the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. 

She shivered. Hot and cold. Her fingers twitched inward, and she wished suddenly that she were still wearing her heavy old leather jacket. She didn’t know whether she wanted to run or step closer. 

It was so strange. Chivaka was rock steady with a gun pointed at her face, but Eben felt more dangerous to her for all his complete lack of malice. 

She was used to cold. She expected cold. First her mother, then her grandfather. All hard expectations and hard lessons. War drums. The command to march. 

The Movrekt were cold enough that to survive, you couldn’t care. You couldn’t feel. But here everything was warm and welcoming, and things _mattered_ a frightening amount. 

She _mattered_ to Eben, and that frightened her. So did the fact that this dance he wanted to draw her into, she had no idea what the steps were, or where it led. 

“How did things go today?” Isis asked, wandering into the server room to interrupt. Chivaka was glad of it. It shook her out of her stupor. 

Ezri shook her head. “Not good. We had to use another of our flashy exits. And I know they have an expiration date.” 

“I don’t know if we can get through to them,” Chivaka told her. “But I know I want to keep trying. I’m just not sure what to try next.” 

Ezri made a frustrated noise. “I just want to shake them and make them see. I just want to _fix_ them. But I know that’s not possible.” 

“No, honey, it’s not.” Isis rubbed her older daughter’s shoulder. “And you’re so brave for trying. I know I tried to stop you both from taking this on, but every day I get closer to believing you can do it.” 

“They’re going to kill them all,” Ezri said in a small voice, a voice Chivaka only ever heard out of her in the presence of her mother. “All of the soldiers who fought for them, lost part of themselves for the ‘glory’ of the Movrekt. Like having gambled and lost makes them _less_. Like being _hurt_ makes them less.” 

Ezri’s (sort-of) boyfriend was blind. Injured in the same war as all the Movrekt soldiers they were trying to save. Khislon was one of the best fighters to come out of the Silver Horn compound. He was a hero. But on the other side, among the Movrekt, that injury would have made him a liability, a lost cause. 

There’d been executions during the war, of course. Some, probably even the Red Glade healers would have agreed that they were mercy killings. Lady Harkesh’s proclamations had slowed down the timetable for the rest of the injured. But it hadn’t stopped the killing, not entirely. 

“I’ve been visiting the patients the Red Glade treated,” Chivaka reminded them, “and some of them are showing signs of coming around to our way of thinking, but that only makes them more vulnerable to the others. Weaker in the eyes of the old guard. If the Movrekt heads of houses realize they’re liabilities in that way as well, it will give them all the more reason to strike.” 

Ezri nodded. “I’ve been hearing some things through the network of Movrekt servants we have ties with. I think they’ll strike the hospital soon.” Her expression was bleak. 

The servants of the Movrekt houses all talked to each other, gossiped and told stories, like some kind of secret underground society buried beneath another secret underground society. That network had opened itself up to the leaders of the reborn House Harkesh once it was made clear that Ezri and the others respected the servants as equals, the way no other Movrekt nobles had. 

The information was good, and it came quickly. When Lira Viresca had disappeared from the hospital, having hinted that she would turn herself in, would rather die than live in hiding, they learned her fate. They learned she’d been beheaded. As an example. 

Chivaka had to offer what she could. “Just tell me what you need me to do. I’m your second, remember?” 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Ezri said. “You could take hold of more of that power yourself, you know. You know the culture better than I do.” 

“Yes, I do, in some ways. And you may frighten them, but the power you have over them is fleeting. They wouldn’t respect you as much if I appeared to have independence. I need to follow your lead.” 

“Or at least appear to,” Ezri said with a raised eyebrow, and then a devious smile. 

“What?” 

“They need to believe that anything you do is my idea. So here’s _carte blanche_ : it is. Go do your thing.” 

Chivaka blinked for a full minute, before she could absorb the implications of that. She spoke for Ezri. She acted for Ezri. For the head of House Harkesh. 

Her head lifted in pride, that Ezri trusted her so much. But she felt lost, as well. Confused. 

Before her stood a void, an empty silence that begged to be filled with her voice. But what would she say? Who was she? 

Movrekt. But what did that mean now? 

Where on Bahamut’s earth was she meant to begin? 

* * *

Chivaka knew how the Movrekt worked _now_. How they’d worked for centuries before Chivaka had even been born. But there was a yawning chasm between that and the vague and distant future she could almost picture for them. And she was not yet standing in the right place to even begin to bridge that gap. 

She knew the major players in the Movrekt organization, she knew where many of their business interests lay, thanks to a very secret black book that had come into Ezri’s possession. But to move them, she would need them to owe her something. She’d been a foot soldier, no standing in the business. No one owed her anything. Except, perhaps, her uncle Padric. 

And he was among the wounded. He’d lost a hand, his right. 

With that, he’d lost so much of what mattered to him, and every time Chivaka visited him, she worried that she was watching her only remaining family slip away. Being able-bodied, being a soldier like any other, was so important in the Movrekt. 

He should have been in no position to negotiate, either. But House Reseda was in almost as much disarray as House Harkesh. Her grandfather, Tanot, had been head of house, before he’d pushed too hard in battle, his lieutenant had betrayed him, and the whole power structure had fallen like a house of cards. 

House Reseda had been a small house scrambling for position, only having become a major power in organized crime in Europe in the last decade or so. Before the war, one of their greatest assets for alliance with American houses had been Chivaka herself. And if she knew anything, she knew that her body was not something she was willing to trade away in this game. 

But, if she could get Padric on her side, she might be able to gain some foothold in House Reseda, with all of its connections. And that would be a start. 

Would it be worthwhile, though? She did not want to be a part of what the remains of House Reseda had become. 

Chivaka wanted her family back, she wanted to be part of House Reseda again, but she hesitated to be part of House Reseda unless the House operated on _her terms._ She’d learned so much; her principles were radically altered. Although she admired Hale for standing up for his men against his commanding officer, her grandfather, when it came to humans, he was no better than his predecessor had been. And when it came to the culling, he was worse. 

Just in practical terms, House Reseda specialized in the money laundering side of the Movrekt’s criminal operations. Influencing that meant gaining influence over the other Houses. They could choose which houses they did business with, and either encourage or punish those who had been disobeying Lady Harkesh. 

There was a lot at stake. 

She didn’t know what she was doing, but all she could do was begin. 

She went to the hospital where the Red Glade had collected all the permanently injured Movrekt soldiers they could find, first to heal them, then to keep them prisoner, and ultimately it had become a kind of protective custody. It was a grey area for the Red Glade, who generally didn’t get involved in Movrekt affairs, and their interest in protecting people who didn’t want to be protected was waning. They helped those who _asked_ for help. 

Her uncle was there, reading a book, trying to look cool and above it all despite the bandaged stump of his right arm and the subtle lines of pain she could see in his face. 

“Uncle Padric,” she greeted, warm, but not too warm. He was old Movrekt. It wouldn’t do. 

“Yes, my dear?” he asked. His accent always transported her, to England, where they’d both lived on and off for most of her life. 

Chivaka sat in front of him, fixing him with her eyes, not indulging in any further pleasantries. “I want to talk about the future of House Reseda,” she said. 

“If you’re asking me what I think, then I think neither one of us is going to be able to do much to change the future of House Reseda.” He eyed her thoughtfully. “The war has changed us both too much.” 

She shook her head. “I don’t accept that.” She took a breath, and told him what she’d concluded. “I need to gain control of the House.” 

Padric raised his eyebrows. “Well, you’ve gone and aligned yourself with the Red Glade,” he pointed out. “Learned their ways, their mysteries. Become one of them. Don’t think I’m not grateful, because I am. You, the Red Glade, you saved dragonkind. You’re the only reason I’m alive right now. But then again, am I?” He shrugged, in a way that brought attention to his stump of a wrist. 

“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “You have to believe that, or we’re not gonna get anywhere.” 

Padric scoffed. “You think believing in yourself will save you? Sounds like exactly the Red Glade’s kind of brainwashing. And a Red Glade healer, no matter how determined, will never really be able to take over a Movrekt house.” 

He meant Ezri, she knew, as much as he meant her. 

He disrespected Ezri. He disrespected her place as head of House Harkesh. 

That spurred Chivaka’s anger, but she had no trouble channeling it into indignance on her own behalf, as well. Her eyes glowed vividly purple. “I am not here as a Red Glade healer,” she said coldly. “Taking what the Red Glade offers in knowledge, in power, that in no way stops me from being Movrekt. Not _your_ niece, and certainly not the Reaper’s.” 

Her uncle looked at her skeptically. “She does have the heads of houses spooked, for now. She’s got her uncle’s ferocity, his temper. But until she proves herself cold-blooded and ruthless in actions as well, until she kills for the position, they won’t respect her. The same is true of you.” 

Chivaka hissed through her teeth. “I don’t want to be a Movrekt head of house, if that’s what it means.” 

“Then don’t be a Movrekt head of house.” 

She glared at him. That very practical suggestion, with its implication that she should give up her ambition if she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her principles, just made her all the more determined to prove him wrong. To prove all of them wrong. 

She needed House Reseda. She needed _him._ She channeled that need into confidence. 

“Padric West. I am Movrekt. I am Lady Harkesh’s second in command. I outrank you. I am what the Movrekt are now. You are the soldier I want. Will you grant me that I am your commander, and therefore head of a viable faction of House Reseda, or do I need to start a new House on my own?” Her tone softened fractionally. “You are my last family, Uncle Padric. I will not lose you to this.” 

Padric smoothed his thumb over the cover of his book, something old and leather-bound, but distinctly human. “It’s not what your grandfather would have wanted,” he mused. 

She growled, deep in her throat. “I don’t give a flying fuck what Tanot would have wanted. He wanted me married to Prince Mahkai and breeding like a cow. He thought it was the only way to tie House Reseda to House Harkesh. But now I am firmly tied to the head of House Harkesh by my own means, and Tanot Reseda is dead. So are you with me, or not?” 

Padric was silent, contemplating her, but she waited for an answer. Finally he said, “You’re different.” 

“You’re damn right I’m different. I helped take apart the world, and now I’m going to put it back together the best way I know how.” 

Her uncle let himself look tired, then, dropping some of the pretense of cold composure. “They won’t listen to me, if that’s what you’re asking for. My voice will do you no good.” 

“Have you tried?” she asked. 

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking pained. The expression of affection, of concern, was one she had never seen on him, but it looked very much as it had on her father, his brother, before he’d died. 

It had been a long time. 

“Chivvie, darling,” he told her gently, “I’m in here with the others for a reason; they’ve written me off. Without both hands, I’m as good as dead to them, you know that. Even if, by some quirk or miracle, they let me live? They won’t take my advice. They won’t see me as fit to pass on the title.” 

He feared for his life. He was practiced at hiding it, but he showed it to her now. He wouldn’t budge on this. And, remembering what had become of Lira, she really did understand. 

She’d simply never before seen her uncle as an equal, rather than a better. Even when demanding his allegiance. That had been a search for leverage among those superior to her. But no. She fully realized now that if she wanted to change the Movrekt, if she wanted to lead House Reseda, she would need to know that the power she had access to was the power that rested in her own hands. No greater power would bend to her will. All she could do was increase her own. 

She took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. “Fine, then,” she said. “How might the title pass? Who does Hale fear?” 

“The way things stand? Anyone willing to fight him for it. His grasp is the strongest, but still not strong. He fears you, yes, in many ways. You have a strong claim. Your grandfather was grooming you for a high position in the family. Hale would try to put you in as a puppet if he thought he could pull it off. But you aligned yourself with the Red Glade before you aligned yourself with the reborn House Harkesh. They know you won’t follow their lead. They know you have outside interests. And you haven’t been fighting for control of the House, not actively. As Tanot’s second, Hale has a claim on that basis—you haven’t been there, and he has.” Her uncle gave her a long, penetrating look. “If you want House Reseda, don’t let that go. That’s your place, by our traditions, if you can take it back, if you can defend it. You can, Chivvie, I know you can.” Padric’s voice had gone pleading. “You are as good a Movrekt soldier as any of them. You’re a sharpshooter, and a scout, and a commander. You _have_ the tools you need. My advice to you? Show them you’re still a Movrekt. Kill him, and me.” 

He gestured to his chest, posture open and waiting. His expression was so earnest. He would have her take his life right now. He sat ready to be stabbed in the heart. For her life, for her ambition, for her place in the House, he would gladly see his life taken away by her hand. He asked her to lead House Reseda. He asked that it be her that killed him. 

Chivaka’s face set, determined. “I won’t.” She wanted House Reseda to _save_ her uncle and the others. To save the Movrekt from such senseless traditions. Without that, it was a senseless goal. She would never _kill them to get there._

_Her uncle shook his head, disappointed, but resigned to that answer. “Then you won’t truly be head of House Reseda.”_

_She needed House Reseda. She needed to save him. She needed to save her people from themselves._

_“I’ll find a way.”_

* * *

__

_I’ll find a way._

_But how,_ she kept asking herself, _but how, but how,_ until it became an echo so repeated it had ceased to be a question. It was simply the rhythm of her life, of her desperation. 

She learned more every day about the potential that magic had, about her own capacity. About how to shape the physical world around her. But, all too often, she was more occupied with, and frustrated by, all the things magic _couldn’t_ do. 

It could communicate, yes, it could connect, but it couldn’t change minds. It couldn’t alter personalities. 

It couldn’t do this work for her. 

_I’ll find a way._

It seemed impossible. She was going to let down her people. Let them be killed for no real purpose. 

She pestered Isis and Ezri to teach her more of the magic they knew, the magic they’d perfected over the years, small and controlled water spells for healing, air spells for secrecy, but they knew nothing as complex as the vision she had in her head. Nothing like the tight knots and braids of magic that went into computer drives. They translated their spells through the Draconic language into simple directives aimed at an aspect of the universe. Silicon magic, as she understood it, had several languages all its own, built just to talk to the chips and tell them what to do and precisely how to do it. 

Her fire magic had no such language. 

But what the Red Glade healers could, and did, teach her was how to listen to the language that human and half-dragon bodies used to talk to themselves and each other. How to manipulate the body using that knowledge, and how to read in the body what was necessary. 

It was fascinating, but it was also frustrating. This, just like diplomacy and the slow acquisition of political power, seemed like the slow, circuitous way to get an answer to an immediate and urgent problem. 

Soon Chivaka was restless again. 

She played with Isis’s baby, Rysa, she paced the mansion, circled the server room. She knew how the Movrekt were used to working. She didn’t know how to change the way they worked. Not without destroying everything they were. And despite everything they’d done, she didn’t want to do that. 

She didn’t want to hurt them more than she had to. 

When her orbit took her near Eben’s little corner of the server room, he always greeted her, always tried to tease a smile out of her. But his usual old standards weren’t working very well today. 

The third time she ducked into the server room, hugging herself, Eben looked up with concern from his typing. “Do you… need anything, is there anything I could do?” 

He was always so careful with her, after his first overture had hit her a little too hard. He never flirted outright, always careful to simply be a friend. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t fragile, that she wouldn’t break, but honestly, she _felt_ fragile right now. She was absurdly grateful, both that he was being so careful, and that he hadn’t backed off entirely. Even though his simply _existing_ seemed to try to pull her in. 

After all, she’d never told him she didn’t want any of that with him. Because she liked him. Because she didn’t know what she wanted. 

He was a good foil. A good friend. 

Chivaka hadn’t given him an answer, but he still turned his chair, settling in to listen as if she was already saying something absolutely fascinating. 

He made it so easy to talk. 

“I just… I need to figure this out. I need to find an approach to fixing the imbalance in the Movrekt power structure. We need to get a foothold.” She sighed forcefully. “Ezri and I, we’re both just flailing around, really. Trying to make the right gesture at the right time so that the Movrekt doesn’t come falling down around our ears. But the truth is that the Movrekt House lords _do_ have the power. They have the power to weed out the wounded from their ranks. They have the power to ignore the tiny thing that House Harkesh has become, and carry on with business as usual. We’re just delaying the inevitable, really, stalling and bluffing and desperately hoping they never figure it out.” 

“Well, I’m no expert at talking to the Movrekt,” Eben admitted. “That’s all you.” 

“I know. But you know so much about the universe. About languages that make it tick in tiny little subtle ways. DNA working away inside lizard cells and code sifting all the information on these drives.” 

Eben bit his lip. “I have to be honest with you,” he said. “I know just about as much about how to code a database as I suspect you know about telomere reconstruction in half-dragons.” 

Chivaka looked at him blankly. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you just said.” 

He grinned. “I suspected as much. And when Rui and Kalila are talking dependency trees or whatever it is that makes a database navigable, the ducks are much more useful conversational partners than I would be. They, like the conversation, fly right over my head.” 

Chivaka couldn’t help but chuckle. “So what do you do here all day?” 

“I type up Isis’s notes. I do code a little HTML, a little CSS. But that’s just the window dressing. That’s just the languages that tell the chips how to make the words look.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “I’m just here for the ambience.” 

“So web design?” she asked, determinedly ignoring the other implications of his words. 

“Exactly. The others make sure that people can find the information they’re looking for. I just make sure it’s nice to look at.” 

“So you use magic to make it easier for people to understand things,” she said. “I’d say that’s _exactly_ the kind of expertise I need.” 

“Huh,” said Eben. “I suppose that is one way to look at it.” His smile was soft, maybe flattered. “So what do you want the Movrekt to understand?” 

“That their injured soldiers are not worthless, not powerless. That they’re still formidable not only in their contributions, but in the threat they could potentially pose.” She sighed. “But before I can convince the Movrekt as a whole of that, I need to find some way to convince the injured soldiers themselves.” 

“And you said before you want to change the balance of power. Even it out.” Eben chuckled, an air of delighted discovery in his face. “You want balance. Well, balance is my specialty.” He tilted his head to one side, looking at the servers in their neat lines, humming away. “I have an idea.” 

Oh, that sent a chill through her. Good or bad, she wasn’t sure. She knew the glint in his eyes was dangerous. She knew she was glad that a personality like his was on her side. 

“I’m afraid of your ideas,” she told him. “You unmade all the magic on the planet. You convinced me to go along with it. You convinced _Isis_ to go along with it. That scares me.” 

He gave her a tiny, twisted smile. “You gave me the idea.” 

_That’s what scares me the most._

But nothing she’d been trying had worked. Or not fast enough. Her kind of big and flashy didn’t have the subtle and unsettling quality that his always seemed to, coming at a problem from an unexpected angle and tearing through it like paper. He took her ideas and he twisted them, and when they exploded, they shook everything up in a totally unforeseen way. 

If she wanted things to change, drastically, now, she could do worse than one of Eben’s ideas. 

“Your plans, they scare me. They scare me a lot. But they do tend to work. So let’s have it.” 

He focused his eyes on hers, earnest and almost pleading. “I want to teach magic to your uncle and the others.” 

Chivaka gaped. She wouldn’t have believed what she was hearing, if it had come from anyone’s mouth but Eben’s. For a Darkhan like him, it was practically treason. 

They couldn’t. 

“Magic?” she stammered finally. “To Movrekt soldiers? But that’s our biggest advantage over the Movrekt establishment right now! We can’t afford to lose it.” 

Eben shook his head emphatically. “That’s not what we’d be doing. They aren’t part of the establishment. The establishment wants to kill them! This is what we’re looking for—people who are Movrekt people, but have reason to want the culture to change.” 

“The business is all they’ve known! Their places. Their families!” She could hear Isis approach at the sound of raised voices. Eben always made her flare up, made her feel her passions. “They’ll try to trade the knowledge away to get back what they had. To help defend and advance their families.” 

“They won’t.” 

Chivaka froze, terribly uneasy, terribly afraid. “So your solution is, we hand the Movrekt our greatest advantage? That’s like giving them nukes and trusting them not to glass us.” 

“Yes.” His eyes hadn’t left hers. 

This wasn’t a joke. This was his plan. 

“Oh, Bahamut’s breath. You actually mean that. You want to trust _Movrekt_ with magic.” She trembled, though she’d been well-trained not to show it. 

“Why does that bother you so much?” Eben reached out towards her, as if he would take her hand, then stopped himself. “I trust _you,_ after all.” 

Oh. Bahamut’s bones and blood. Chivaka’s mouth went dry as she watched Eben. She had marched against his people, pointed guns at people who were family to him. How could he trust her? But here he was, trusting. He stood before her with his chest cut open and his heart exposed, and all she could do was watch it beating. 

She tried to open her mouth to speak, but she almost choked on her own tongue. 

“Chivaka, eyes here,” Isis said, quiet but sharp from the doorway, and it was a relief to have a command to answer, and a reason to look away. 

Isis looked like some ancient statue of the Madonna carved out of dark-stained wood, her baby daughter Rysa on her hip a contrast in both color and energy. Rysa’s small figure, with its warm olive skin and golden-brown wisps of hair, was alive with fidgety curiosity. Isis herself was her usual well of calm, though Chivaka knew well that Eben was one of the few people who could break that calm. 

She wasn’t alone in that. 

“You two all right in here?” Isis asked. 

“Yes,” said Chivaka, breathing easier again in her presence. “Thanks.” 

She chanced a look back at Eben, whose brow was creased with worry. 

“It was just an idea,” he told her. “I understand if you think it’s too dangerous.” He was droopy as a wet kitten, though. 

“Oh no,” Isis said, laughter in her voice as she joggled Rysa. “What trouble are you getting us into now, Eben Keth?” 

Chivaka smiled at that, though it was a little watery. “Oh, he’s just suggesting doing things with magic that could destroy the world, _again._ ” 

“No. He wouldn’t.” Isis looked her in the eye and spoke in a flat voice of disbelief too serious to take seriously. 

“He wants to teach magic to the wounded Movrekt,” Chivaka explained, “and trust them not to take it straight to their superiors.” 

“They won’t if they want to survive,” Eben insisted. 

Chivaka shook her head. “You’re wrong. They’re nothing without their families, or so they believe. They will. Lira Viresca left the hospital last week of her own will, went right back to her family, even though she knew they’d kill her, just for the loss of her hearing. And even if we’re done losing patients like that? The Movrekt will hear what the Copper Eye is up to, what _you’re_ up to, and they’ll come looking. The wounded will do whatever their superiors tell them, if they’re asked directly. They’ll hand over any magic you teach them straight to their heads of houses. And then our effort will be done for.” 

Eben blew out a breath, considering that. He didn’t seem like he was about to give up. But he was taking her concerns seriously. And she supposed that was something. 

These were her people, and she wanted to save them, but she also knew how stubborn they were. How they clung to the way Nash had done things. 

“Someone says the word ‘impossible’,” Chivaka mused, “you just live to prove them wrong, don’t you?” 

He grinned. “Yeah, pretty much.” 

“How do you stop them from going to their heads of houses with something like this?” 

“I’ll have to be tricky,” he concluded. “I’m going to start small, with air element spells.” 

Isis eyed him. “You know as well as I that those can be just as dangerous as any other element.” 

Eben smiled crookedly. “I’m betting _they_ don’t. And I plan to keep it that way, at least for a little while.” 

“Sounds… tricky,” Isis said. 

“You told me air is my element. Air is the element of laughter. Well, I can work with that.” 

Chivaka couldn’t picture how it would play out. It could be disastrous. But it was still their only real idea. 

“Okay,” Chivaka said. “We’ll give it a chance.” 

Isis shook her head. “I’ve seen you do the impossible, so I’m not going to stop you if you want to try again. But how will you get them to listen in the first place? You’re a known Darkhan. The Movrekt spy network will have circulated your picture. There’s no easy way past that.” 

That was true. If Eben was going to be doing this teaching himself, he’d be putting himself right in the path of danger. But he was the only one who had even a chance of pulling off what only _he_ could imagine. Chivaka shivered. She couldn’t be the reason he died. 

“It’s too dangerous,” she decided. 

“I disagree,” Eben said. Chivaka knew that steel in his eye, knew he wouldn’t back down if he thought he could save people. 

“I don’t understand how you plan on keeping these spells from the Movrekt lords,” she said, “and that scares me enough. I don’t understand how you intend to protect _yourself_ from them, too. And that is too much for me to take on faith.” Her fists clenched as she stared him down.” 

“I can promise you that they will not recognize me,” he said. “And I can show you how. Can I borrow some makeup?” he asked, turning to Isis. 

Isis gave a little smirk, and went to get her bag. “Do you need any help?” she asked as she handed it over. 

“I might be a little out of practice, but I think I’ll be okay,” he said with an echoing smile, as he ducked into the nearest bathroom, one floor up. 

What was he up to? 

Chivaka saw immediately as he came down the stairs. 

The transformation was fascinating, and it was disconcerting. 

Eben clearly knew his way around a makeup brush, softening the lines of his face, making his eyelashes dark and full and graceful, his lips full and bright. He put on a large, fluffy, violently purple sweater. He borrowed a denim skirt from Isis. And suddenly his short-cropped hair and flat chest didn’t matter. He looked like a woman. 

He looked like himself. 

It was almost comforting, almost made him seem less of a threat, even though Eben seemed less thrown off by Isis and her wife than most people in the compound, even though Eben, as he usually was, was never threatening. Not in any way that made sense to be afraid of. 

Isis looked him over with an assessing eye. “I don’t think scent will be an issue,” she told him. “At least in terms of gender. There’s already so much gray area, so much overlap even with their rigid definitions, and they won’t be used to the slightly different smells of a Black Darkhan halfie. But if I were you, I’d change your hair.” 

Eben smiled, eyes sparkling. “Oh, there’s a spell I’ve been meaning to try,” he told her. “But it’s all water and fire. I’d appreciate both your help.” 

Chivaka wanted to cast with him again. She wanted it so much that it scared her. 

He laid out the spell for them. The draconic language she was becoming familiar with was scratched onto pink ribbons that they looped around his head, tucking them behind his ears and pinning them in place. They couldn’t tie the ribbon, or it would stop up the flow of energy through the spell. 

“It’s solid,” Isis commented. “I might do the same thing, if I were building this spell, but I’ve never done anything quite like it. Never seemed like a priority.” 

Eben shook his head. “Seems just like you,” he commented. “But my rule is, never learn anything new if you can’t use it to have a little fun once in a while.” 

Isis chuckled, shaking her head. “And that’s you all over, Eben.” 

“You’ve focused fire,” Chivaka said, reading the spell on the ribbon and seeing at least some of the things it was meant to do. It was… intricate. Controlled. Beautiful the way the magic was that flowed out from Eben’s fingers at the keyboard. 

Chivaka couldn’t have described what she felt when it came to magic. It was certainly interesting, compared to some of her lessons in school, and it seemed useful as a weapon, as a tool for power. Her Movrekt upbringing had taught her that if information seemed useful or practical, you had best learn it, and learn it quick. 

But it was something different, with magic. 

Magic was feeling an element in the universe around you like an extension of your body and using rhythm, pattern and language as tools to shape it. Magic felt like breathing. Magic felt like life. 

And if she’d been told all her life that magic was dangerous, forbidden, well, it somehow only helped. The Movrekt had tried to keep her from learning so many things, from realizing so many truths. Learning those had only helped her. 

Fire magic was especially taboo. 

She was rather gifted with fire, Isis always told her, although to Chivaka it seemed as if she was making slow, hard-won progress by inches. She both resented her limits and was reassured by them. There were stories of what fire magic could do, uncontrolled, miscalculated or in a fit of anger, when a caster overreached. 

Today, Chivaka took the hands of two other casters, and she reached for fire, giving it a place in the delicate tinderbox that was Eben’s hair. Half-dragon hair was only a little more resistant to fire than human hair. It would go up in flame as easy as a candlewick. 

Eben had so much trust in her. So easily made himself vulnerable to all the ways in which she was most dangerous. 

Chivaka steadied herself with a breath. She had to live up to it. There simply wasn’t another option. 

This spell was to keep him safe while he went about the business of helping her save the Movrekt. If there was a chance this plan might work, might save a life or more, she could not discard it. She could not refuse his help. So she had to do what he asked in return, if it meant making his disguise better, keeping him safer. 

She felt the magic, quick, alive in the world around her, waiting for her to call it forth. 

The words were chanted, and the magic sprang into motion, chemicals changing, burning, making way for other things. It was a delicate braid of elements and factors that kept the reactions small, controlled, and something resembling safe. They kept up their song. The dark fuzz of his hair washed pale, then pink. 

She hadn’t had the time to notice, when the world was ending, but the man could sing. 

“Did it work?” he asked, wide-eyed, straining to see the fuzz of his hair at the edge of his vision. 

The pink looked good on him. Bright and cheerful. Like cotton candy, but bolder. “That’s brilliant,” she told him. “You’re beautiful.” Then she realized what she’d said, and to who, and she felt herself flush. 

She felt as if she could very easily, and gladly, break open the earth under her feet and fall through, and keep falling, forever. 

Eben’s wide eyes turned on her, and then looked away, and Chivaka thought that maybe, underneath all the color, he was blushing too. 

Isis patted him on the arm. “Go, look in the mirror,” she told him. “It’s something to see.” 

He grinned, and left. 

Isis side-eyed her. “Are you two… something, potentially, at least?” she asked. 

“Oh!” Chivaka had to think about that, and even then… “Well. No. I don’t think so? Is it selfish of me to like that he likes me, anyway?” 

She didn’t know what all she felt about Eben, but she knew she didn’t want to hurt him. 

“You know, I don’t think I can answer that for you.” 

Ways of doing things, ways of being, what the right way to live was, it was all open, in Isis’s worldview. All changeable. Chivaka knew that. She’d known that since she met the woman. 

There was never a simple answer to a question like this. Isis believed things, lived by principles, and as much as she lectured sometimes, there were very few times when she actually told someone what course of action she thought would be best for them. 

Chivaka sighed. “Some days I just wish someone would. Answer all the questions for me. Tell me which choices to make.” 

“If you really wanted that,” Isis told her wryly, “You’d be Hale’s second. Not my daughter’s.” 

Chivaka rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to be commanded. Not about my life, my personal choices. Just, maybe, I’d like a little hint, now and again.” 

“If you want hints about how to deal with Eben,” Isis said, “Maybe the person you should be asking is Eben?” 

“ _Ugh_ ,” Chivaka replied. 

“I know,” Isis sympathized. “Not as easy as it sounds. All evidence says that Eben is a good egg. I believe you are, too. But it’s still very possible for two good people who love each other to hurt each other deeply.” She squeezed Chivaka’s shoulder gently. “That doesn’t mean we should run from it. It means we learn, and we do better next time.” 

Chivaka let that hand and those words steady her until she heard Eben coming back down the stairs. 

His hair looked different, even fluffier, richer and fuller than before. Chivaka, with her straight blond mane, had no idea of the ins and outs of styling Black hair, but she’d seen enough variations of the same hair on Isis and Ezri to know there were a lot of different ways it could go. Even as short as Eben’s was, right now, he obviously knew some of the tricks. 

If she hadn’t seen the intermediate steps—Eben was right. He wouldn’t be recognized. He looked like someone else completely. 

Still, if they were going to pull this off, there had to be more to their deception than that. They had to know who this woman was, what Harkesh’s second was doing bringing her along. 

It would be Chivaka’s job to make sure he was as prepared as he could be. 

“What’s your name?” Chivaka asked. 

Eben grinned. “Call me Ava. I’m Ava Kesh.” 

Kesh was a familiar name, the Movrekt version of his Darkhan last name, Keth. The Draconic tongue had split into two dialects when the two sects had split. The same Draconic word was part of the Harkesh family name. 

“Kesh” meant “old.” “Harkesh” meant “the oldest.” 

“Ava Kesh.” She said the name, tasting it. “Good to meet you, Ava. Which branch of the Kesh family are you from?” 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I consider myself Red Glade first, and a Kesh second.” 

It had the ring of truth to it. The Copper Eyes had been distancing themselves from the rest of the Darkhnit over the last few years, and Isis and Ezri’s Red Glade ideals appealed to them in general, and Eben in particular. Becoming Red Glade was less of an official process, and more of a… drift. Spend enough time with them and one day, you simply found that you were, more or less, one of them. 

“That’s good,” said Chivaka. “People will think of the Vas when they see you. With a Movrekt name, they’ll assume you are from a branch who has been with the Red Glade from the beginning, like them. And you have the accepting attitude, but even warmer. Friendlier.” 

He grinned. “The avatar of the element of laughter, at your service.” 

Chivaka scoffed. “That was one time.” 

She felt herself being pulled in again. It was exhilarating, even as it frightened her. She decided to give herself permission to do whatever she felt drawn to do, and feel however she felt about it. If that was a mistake, she’d deal with that when the time came. 

She knew she could defend herself and her body, if need be. She thought she knew Eben well enough to know she wouldn’t need to hurt him in the process. 

At least, not physically. 

“The four of us came together to cast when the world was ending,” Eben said eagerly. “I think it meant something.” 

She wondered if he knew what he did to her, saying things like that. But he wasn’t thinking of the two of them. He was thinking of his own way with magic, with people, with words. How it might be able to overcome this whole problem. 

He had so much confidence in his own power. 

“Are you sure about this?” she asked him. “Risking your life, risking the peace, to save Movrekt soldiers?” 

Eben sighed, his face turning to one of its more thoughtful, serious expressions, which were all the more weighty for their rarity. Heavy and precious as gold. 

“My father taught me a lot, before he died,” he told her. “He was a great man. He led a human congregation, until one day, he followed an angel home.” He tilted his head, thinking. “Well, that’s how he saw it. He was pretty shocked to discover the claws and the forked tongue. He’d followed an angel and ended up with a serpent. And it made him see a lot of things in a different light. All the stories, all the symbols, all the rules. By the time he married my mother, he liked to say that you couldn’t ever judge someone, not until you’d seen the view from inside their heart, and you can tell you’ve gotten there because you won’t want to judge anymore.” 

Chivaka just listened, grateful for how seriously he was taking this, grateful that it was as important to him as it was to her that someone tried to save the Movrekt from themselves. 

“Human, dragon, Movrekt, Darkhnit. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ And if another person doesn’t see it that way, well, there are ways of evening the playing field. Tricks of words and tricks of emotions. Ways of getting them to see you as a person, or at least leave you alone. They don’t always work, but the world will never change if we don’t keep pushing.” He took a breath. “People like my dad, people who saw slavery and fought it, and everyone who truly tries to follow in their footsteps, we know the rough side of the path of life. It’s where we belong, where we’ve always lived. Fighting up against power from underneath. Using all the tricks we’ve got.” 

He didn’t sound young and carefree, like he usually did. No, he sounded like he’d seen the very worst of this world. The way Isis did, in her bad moments. And now it hit her that he always did seem to understand where Isis was coming from, where she’d been. 

For half-dragons, age didn’t matter so much. Not about most things, not when they could live hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. Standing next to Eben, Chivaka was hardly ever made to feel young. But she felt young now. Barely eighteen years on this earth, and he’d seen so much more. He knew so much more. What could she have to offer, in comparison to him? In comparison to so many of these people? 

“What are you thinking?” 

“I feel so young, when you talk like that.” 

“Nothing wrong with being young.” 

“You’ve all done so much. You all know so much. What am I even doing, trying to be part of all this? To measure up.” 

“What are you doing? You’re succeeding.” 

“I’m stumbling around in the dark, just trying to do my best.” 

“But you are new, and fresh, and unafraid. You want to reshape the world. You have the will, and the passion, to do it. And that is exactly what we need.” 

He meant that. There was his heart again, exposed, just for her. 

Oh, Bahamut. She was in deep. No matter how hard she tried, he kept drawing her back in, and the more time she spent here, the more addicted to it she became. He always looked at her with such naked admiration, such powerful honesty, when he said things like that. The way that hit her—the warmth, followed by the chill—was becoming familiar. But no less powerful, no less frightening. 

She wanted—something. She didn’t want everything. And she was so afraid to disappoint. 

But she would keep living. Keep fighting. Face the next challenge with her armor on, as she always had. 

Once they were both armored, had all their war paint on, they went out to face what the day would bring. 

Chivaka remembered being fire. All fire. Every bit of combustion in the world at once. Every dragon who’d ever breathed a cloud of smoke. 

She _was_ Movrekt. She was what they’d made her. A match, waiting for its cue to flare up. The Red Glade had merely put her in different hands. Not theirs. Not Ezri’s. _Her own._

Having stood here once before, on the precipice of a great and risky endeavor, she knew she’d risk her own people for the chance to save them. That was fire. 

Eben was air. He was breath. Where others would be terrified—where _she was_ terrified—he seemed to breeze in easily, carelessly. 

He walked into the hospital ward where the injured Movrekt were being kept, smiling and easy, Red Glade medical bag slung over his shoulder as if it belonged there. 

None of the Movrekt there would have doubted for a moment that Ava was a woman of the Red Glade. She acted like the Vas in many ways, but also like herself, like Eben, bright and clever and always ready to laugh. 

They started with Uncle Padric. He sat in the corner of a large lounge, watching his fellow Movrekt over the top edge of one of his books. An illuminated prayer book. She knew he collected them, but she’d never seen him read one in front of other people. It made her wonder. 

His sharp eyes watched the two of them approach, darting between them and looking a question at Chivaka. 

Chivaka sat on his footstool, as she’d done with him so many times, as she would have done with her grandfather. But this time, she didn’t come as a supplicant, as an inferior. This time she had the power, and she wanted to share it. 

She smiled at her uncle, but when she spoke, it was clearly a challenge. “How would you like to learn magic?” 

Padric raised his eyebrows, and put down his book. “Well,” he said. “That’s certainly a novel strategy.” There was a sparkle in his eyes that Chivaka hadn’t seen in far too long. 

Ava grinned. “I thought so. So what do you already know?” 

“Some things,” he said. “But mostly propaganda from an old book of lore written by the Silene Knights. They knew enough to identify the four elements, that two belong to dragons, two to humans, but they eschewed the whole study as coming from the devil. They saw, as much as anyone but the Red Glade ever did, what fire magic could do in the hands of a half-dragon caster. The Knights also knew that the events they witnessed triggered both the end of the war and the creation of the Red Glade,” Padric said dryly. “They believed that what they’d witnessed was hell itself opening up, and that the Red Glade dragons had come out of it more powerful than before because they were consorting with the demons who had emerged.” 

“Do you think I consort with demons?” Ava asked. 

Padric smirked, opening his inner eyelids to reveal a deep red-purple glow. “I think you’ve just started.” 

Ava laughed, bright and easy. “Then I’d say I like some demons,” she replied. 

By the time Padric was using little magical gusts of air to turn his pages for him, they’d gathered quite a crowd, most listening with rapt attention. 

Many of them had heard that Chivaka was a fire specialist, that Ezri’s magic shows were partially of her making. 

“What use are these little tricks of air?” one bent old soldier asked. “We’ll need more if we’re going to survive the rest of the Movrekt. They say you know fire.” 

“Oh, I’m still only a student,” Chivaka demurred, even though Eben hadn’t been studying the practice of magic any longer than she had. 

“Let’s stick with air, for now,” Ava agreed, going along with the plan that he’d insisted on. He had something up his sleeve, with this. 

(And thinking of him as Ava was messing with her head, a little, but she’d done odder things for the sake of political machinations in the Movrekt.) 

So they kept to air. Little things, control of air currents and temperature for heating or cooling their food, for turning the pages of their books. And, of course, meditation. 

Movrekt, as a rule, were not naturals at meditation. 

Padric was one of the best students, and not simply because of his minor head start. He seemed to have developed a rapport with Eben. They’d started writing spells on paper, then folding it up and pelting each other with paper airplanes. 

Uncle Padric seemed to especially like to peg Eben—Ava—in the forehead with them. 

Chivaka simply liked to see them getting along, and to see her uncle laughing, and not trying to find distraction in his book despite the lines of pain he still wore much of the time. 

He seemed… defiant. He seemed to have left behind the despair that came from knowing his life would never be quite the same again. 

Not all of the injured Movrekt had the same fresh light in their eyes. But some did. Some had realized that they had had power put into their own hands. 

Chivaka felt a rush of pleasure, knowing she’d done the same for these people as Isis had done for her. 

It was hard to leave, but Chivaka knew that these soldiers would push themselves as hard as they felt they needed to, to survive. It was up to their teachers to set limits, to end the lesson where it would still be useful. 

So it was near dusk when they found themselves in the Airstream with the wards up, going over what they’d managed to do, and the next step of the plan. 

Chivaka was jittery with pride, and with retrospective terror. “This is really happening!” she enthused. “Things are happening; I can see attitudes changing here. I’m so glad. Thank you for all your help, Eben. This couldn’t happen without you.” She grasped his shoulders before she realized what she was doing, but squeezed them anyway before she made herself let go. 

“Don’t thank me yet,” he told her. “The hard part of all this is yet to come. Correcting the balance of power only works once the powerful have been made to realize that they are… less than they thought. And that is never an easy transition.” 

Chivaka wasn’t sure what to make of that. This kind of caution was barely in her repertoire. There was a time to march forward and a time to surrender, but pessimism about a plan that was their best chance right now? That seemed to be succeeding? No. She set it aside. 

“It is fun to watch you work. On top of everything else, you’re a good actor. I almost believed it myself.” 

“Well,” Eben said, in a tone unusually hesitant for him, “it’s not all precisely acting.” 

She finally managed to calm herself, to temper her mood to his. She wasn’t used to slowing her rhythm to match with his. He had always been the energetic one, the dynamic one. But there was something here that made him solemn. Was he doubting his abilities now? 

“I know you consider yourself Red Glade when you’re here,” she said, thinking it through out loud. “This, sharing information with the Movrekt, is something a Darkhan would probably never do, even a Copper Eye. But, I mean, you move and speak like a woman.” 

“Yes,” he said, eyes steady and serious on hers. “Because, sometimes, I am.” 

She frowned at him. She might have laughed, but Eben looked so serious, a little scared, even, hands clutched together, and that was so unlike him. Eben Keth was afraid of nothing. He was so sure of himself. And now…. 

This was a weak point, something people might exploit, might mock. This was something that made him just as afraid of her as she was of him. 

This was him, laid open, trusting her. Oh my Bahamut. 

And she didn’t understand, but she wanted so badly not to misstep, not to betray this trust. “But how can you be….” She didn’t know how to continue. 

“I’m genderqueer,” he said, and he said it like he was determined to be proud, but not with his usual lightness. This was heavy and important to him as nothing he had ever told her before. 

She wanted to go slow, to be sure she understood before she responded, but it wasn’t a word she knew. 

“Wait, queer like—like Isis and her wife?” Isis and Gabiya were part of her life here, that was a fact. It had taken some getting used to, but now Chivaka knew them as a family more solid than any Movrekt House, a couple who loved each other and their daughters without reservation. 

“Yeah,” Eben agreed, “sort of like that. We all stick together when we can. But there are a lot of different ways to be queer. Isis is pansexual. She’s attracted to people regardless of gender. My aunt Laleh told me about some of her rants on the subject.” Chivaka nodded; she’d heard too. “Her wife, Gabiya, is lesbian—she’s more or less only attracted to women. But then there’s the gender stuff—some people just feel that they’re not the same gender as everyone’s always assumed they are, and they often change how they look and dress and even their names as part of being themselves. I’ve never minded my name, or people assuming I’m male. But I’m queer enough that when I dress so that people assume I’m female, when I go by Ava, that’s just as much me as Eben is.” 

It was a lot to absorb, even having lived with and gotten used to Ezri’s family. Her mothers were simply a fact of life, now. This, though? 

“That’s… I mean I knew people did all sorts of odd things, especially humans, but I’ve mostly heard it framed as silly stuff that people need to get over before they settle down and have babies.” 

She watched as Eben’s expression went stiff. Clearly that had been a misstep. Her throat felt thick with the weight of it. Of being the reason Eben Keth couldn’t smile. “Not that I think that! I respect Isis and her marriage! But I mean….” She took a breath, trying to find words. “In the Movrekt, of course, everything’s about reproduction. Nash was mad for preserving the purest dragon bloodlines. He failed utterly, but, all those traditions, they’re still there. Marriage, sex—it’s all about babies. All about surviving and multiplying and being dominant on Earth.” 

“So this is pretty new for you,” Eben said, nodding along, though his mouth had formed a hard line when he heard some of it. 

“Very new,” she agreed. “I mean, that’s in the past. I know how I was raised, but I try not to believe in it without thinking more and learning more. But even in the Darkhan compound, most people aren’t like Isis and Gabiya. Or like you. I thought Isis doing her own thing was an oddity of the Red Glade. And they’re not a big group. They’re not most dragons.” 

“Darkhan culture can be pretty awful, too,” he admitted. “But it’s easier in the Copper Eye. We’re out there in the human world, exploring. We _live_ human science. And human science says pretty clearly that people need to be allowed to be who they are and love who they love.” 

Chivaka frowned. There was so much… so many possibilities she hadn’t known about… but still, none of it felt like it explained her. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked cautiously. 

“I know I’m not… normal? Or like I see other people are, the things they want, the things they like. There’s more different kinds of ways of being, with you, with the Red Glade, but still nothing that’s like me. Maybe Ezri is the closest? The way she talks about liking being with Khis, but not liking having a boyfriend? But not like she talks about it, and I don’t have the words for how it’s different!” She tried to tame her frustration. None of this was his fault. It just… made it difficult to be around him. 

“There are a lot of words,” he said ruefully. “And new ones all the time. It’s hard for even me to keep up sometimes.” 

“It’s not just words. Even if I had the words… how do I even know? I’ve barely touched anyone that way. I’m scared to try. And I don’t know how much of that is fear because it was something the Movrekt families threatened to do to me, and how much is just the way I am. My body was a commodity to House Reseda, to my grandfather. Something to be traded away. I danced with Prince Mahkai, once. I didn’t… it mostly made me nervous. I liked him, he was nice. But I didn’t want him closer. Not the way people… touch, when they like each other. And I _couldn’t not_ think about that. I knew Nash wanted his heir to have children of his own.” Her words were tripping over each other now. 

“It’s okay if you don’t know,” he said patiently. 

“But I want to know! I want to be able to tell people who I am and what I want. This whole language humans have invented for explaining who they are and what they feel, I want to be able to do that too. I want to know what I _do_ want so I can go after it if I have the chance. But it’s all so strange. So… alien. I don’t recognize a lot of the things you’re talking about. I haven’t thought about a lot of these things. They didn’t seem important, in the Movrekt. Wanting it, or not wanting it. It was part of business. I know I’m not like Gabiya. She told me once that she learned to stay out of the way of all that because what she wanted, she could never have—Nash was far too possessive. But I….” She sighed, and stopped, at a loss. 

Eben’s eyebrows drew together thoughtfully. “It’s possible you’re asexual,” he said. “Not attracted to anyone in the same way as most people are.” 

“That’s a thing?” she asked. Her gaze was riveted on him as he spoke. 

“As much as any other orientation. They’re all words about who you’re attracted to, and in what ways. Asexual just means that when it comes to sex, that’s no one.” 

Oh. That sounded okay, when he said it. She wasn’t completely unprecedented. The fidgety feeling she got from trying to figure it out subsided a little, and her breath came easier. 

She was an odd duck, but with him around, that didn’t seem bad. After all, he’d shown her that sometimes, even plastic ducks could fly. 

“That seems… like it could be right, for me.” She frowned. “Wrong, for the Movrekt.” She lived a different life, away from him, away from the Darkhnit and the Red Glade. And in that life, she had to hide her weak points. 

“Well,” he said softly. “If you decide that’s what you are, I promise I won’t tell anyone.” 

“Good,” she said, relieved about that, at least. “But does that mean… I’ll never be able to be with anyone? Not properly?” That was a sad thought, but maybe that was just the way she was. 

“It doesn’t mean that at all. There is no ‘proper’ way. You can have romance without sex.” 

Chivaka looked at him a bit skeptically. “Not with anyone in the Movrekt.” 

“Not the way the Movrekt is now, no,” he agreed. “But we’re trying to change that, right?” 

Chivaka gave him a long look. There was so much she wasn’t sure of, so much about herself that she couldn’t map out, even with all these new ways to explain things. 

“How many people do you think are like me?” she asked. “Even if it’s the people who just don’t have the words yet.” 

“A handful in the Darkhnit. I know one or two in the Copper Eye. There are _millions_ of humans.” 

Chivaka’s eyes stung with impending tears, but she resisted. “As much as I see humans as equals now,” she said, “as much as I’d like to think that the Movrekt can change… I don’t think I could be what I want to be to them if they found out I was with a human.” She bit her lip, and willed the tears to dry up. “The one or two you know in the Copper Eye….” 

“One’s aromantic, too,” he told her. “The other lives in Mongolia.” 

“Oh,” she said. 

Why did this hurt so much? She’d been ripped open, injured badly, both in training and when she’d faced Silene Knights and their swords. Now her body was whole. But she’d never hurt this way. 

Then she realized that she’d trusted Eben with a part of herself that was so personal, so central to her and so hard to lay bare, that it was as if she stood in front of him with her chest split open and her heart revealed. 

At this point, what could she do but hand him the knife? 

“Not you, then?” she choked out. 

“Oh,” said Eben softly, with an awe that she recognized from when he’d told her he trusted her with his life. “No, but….” 

Chivaka held her breath, not sure if she wanted to know the rest. Then his face brightened, lifted in a way she’d never seen it before. And it suited him. Levity always did. 

“It would be so worth it to me, to have the chance to be with you in other ways, to give up that part of it.” 

She grinned back at him, not caring any more that her tears were falling. She felt full of soda bubbles, fit to burst. Something had to escape. “In that case, Eben, would you be my… what would I call you? Boyfriend? Or girlfriend, when you’re Ava?” 

“I’d be happy to be your boyfriend,” he answered. “Or your enbyfriend. Or your main squeeze. Or really anything you want to call me.” 

“What’s an enby, then?” she asked, reaching out a hand to take one of his. 

“Oh, there are so many words,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, and proceeded to tell her far more of them than she’d bargained for. 

Chivaka just liked hearing him talk, really. She understood, she thought, how Eben saw her when she was passionate about something, when she cared so much that her thoughts seemed to fill the whole world. 

She felt the heat of liking him, and the shiver that followed. But now when she felt the warm turn cold, it felt more like… a breath of fresh air. Freedom from expectations. 

A thrill of hope, instead of a thrill of fear. 

* * *

Now, he flirted. Gleefully, playfully, but with intent. It was a good look on him. 

Now, she didn’t mind. Now, she knew his intent was… whatever she was ready for, and nothing more. 

She ended up lingering in the Silver Horn mansion even more often than before, leaning over the back of Eben’s chair and bugging him while he was working. 

He didn’t seem to mind. 

“I want to make Padric a present,” she told him. “A piece of magic that he can pick up and use without having to learn all the ins and outs of the spellwork. The way a human picks up a cell phone and doesn’t need to know about all its chips and circuits.” 

“What kind of present? What would you want it to do?” 

“A weapon,” she said decisively. “Something that shows that he is as whole and as dangerous as any other Movrekt soldier.” 

“So… a hand?” 

Oh, that was eerie. Which… would be perfect, really. Get the other Movrekt disconcerted and off-balance. A Movrekt hated being off-balance. 

“Yes,” she agreed. “But not technology, not earth magic like humans make their circuits out of. Everyone’s used to that now. Something dragony. Something _flashy._ ” 

“Like you and your spark,” Eben said, winking at her and managing to make her blush. 

“Yes,” she said. “Like fire incarnate. Help me build the interface between half-dragon nerves and the spells that control fire and air. Help me teach an object how to know what he wants his hand to do without him having to say it.” 

“That almost sounds impossible,” he said. 

She beamed. 

* * *

Chivaka came back to the trailer every night just to check in with Ezri, to touch base with her superior in the Movrekt organization. It was a habit she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to fully let go of, no matter how much the Movrekt changed, no matter how much _she_ changed. 

She supposed it had been inevitable that the person who’d stepped up to replace Nash had been Ezri. Someone from outside that sphere of custom and control. Someone who wouldn’t feel the need to look over her shoulder for whoever held the next rank up. 

That night she came home to find Ezri wrapping a set of bruised, bloody knuckles. 

“Trouble?” she asked, snapping to readiness. “You didn’t call me. I’m supposed to be your backup.” 

“I wasn’t in danger,” Ezri said. “Just a meeting safe in the trailer. Negotiations got… heated.” 

“Deal go south?” Chivaka asked. 

“Thought it might, but I talked them around.” 

“By ‘talked,’ you mean….” 

“Gave them a black eye and bruised ribs and throat, and told them they didn’t want to see me when they went back on their word to me about something _serious,_ because that’s when the claws come out.” 

“Ah,” said Chivaka. 

“Told them I’m worse than Nash, because _his_ torture sessions only lasted until you’re dead, but me? I’ll use my Red Glade magic to bring you back and start all over again.” She looked disgusted with herself. 

“Yeah,” Chivaka replied. “That’d do it.” 

“Is this right?” Ezri asked. “Giving them what they expect from the head of House Harkesh?” 

“They aren’t ready for anything else, or they’d already be Red Glade, or independent.” 

Ezri snorted. “Lady Albastru practically _is_ independent.” 

“Good. Then her, you can treat like a rational being. The rest won’t hear you unless you speak with Nash’s voice.” 

“Will that ever change?” Ezri asked wistfully. 

“We’ll _make_ it change.” Chivaka paused, thinking. “So who was it you were meeting, and what did they do to deserve the black eye?” 

“Lord Viresca’s son. I told him I wouldn’t source drugs for anyone from his House unless all of their underage ‘merchandise’ trading stopped and the kids were released. He thought he could hold out on me. But Gabiya knows his secretary, and his secretary doesn’t much enjoy that aspect of the work. So yeah. I found out.” 

Chivaka growled deep in her throat. “He deserved more than a black eye. _Much_ more.” She was particularly touchy, right now, about teenagers being bought and sold and traded for the attractiveness of their bodies. 

“Yes,” Ezri agreed. “He did. But if I turned him away, he’d just get the drugs elsewhere. This way, he stopped some of his trade, and there’s a chance he’ll scrub the rest. I don’t have control of the whole Harkesh supply network, not yet, but I have control of enough of it that he’ll get better prices, dealing with me.” 

“I _hate_ House Viresca,” Chivaka said with feeling. “Can’t we just… make them go away?” 

“We don’t have the manpower, not without the Silver Horn, and that way lies war.” Ezri sighed. “We’ve done war. That’s what brought us here. Now we’re trying something else.” 

Chivaka watched her closely. “Who are we working with, though, to do it?” 

“Your people,” Ezri said emphatically. “The Movrekt are your people. And we’ll do what we have to to give them another chance.” 

“Even the really awful ones?” Chivaka asked. “Some of them aren’t going to change. And all my Movrekt lessons tell me to kill the people who get in my way. I know that’s not the way you’ve been taught, and I like the way you’ve been taught. But still… I think about it. It still makes sense to part of me.” 

“I watched my mom change the Darkhnit’s minds,” Ezri said. “She didn’t do it by killing. But she also didn’t change the minds of the really backwards ones, the ones at the top, making the decisions. She just… she was herself. Healer Isis Va. She talked to the people who would listen. And then, one day, they decided they’d rather listen to her than to their own ‘leaders.’ And then _they,_ they were the Darkhnit. Not the Council. The people.” 

“The Movrekt are different,” Chivaka replied. 

“So are we.” 

“So where do we draw the line?” 

“I won’t kill,” Ezri said. “Not until it’s a question of saving my life, or someone else’s. I don’t like who I’d become if I let go of that. But I will use people I hate, I will make deals with people who kill. Because I will do whatever it takes to save your people, as long as I don’t lose myself in the process.” 

Chivaka was overcome. “Why? Why do all this for Movrekt?” 

“I’m not one of them, not the way you are. I wasn’t raised a noble or a soldier or a servant. But my father was. They’re still my father’s people.” 

There was a lot still to be said, Ezri’s face showed that plainly, but she couldn’t seem to find the words. 

Chivaka sat down next to her on her bed, leaned up against her side. She knew what it was to feel things, to feel them strongly, things you didn’t even have the words to begin to express. 

* * *

“How are you?” Eben asked solemnly the next morning when she walked in. 

“Can we just… can we just _not?_ I don’t want to think about things right now. I just want to spend time with you. Can we do that?” 

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you need.” There was an uncomfortable but not unfriendly silence as he seemed to think over his options. “Want to go for a walk?” 

They wandered for a while in the woods around the Darkhan compound. He knew the area pretty well, though he’d never lived there, not being Silver Horn by either parentage or profession. All Darkhnit had been welcomed here. But she had been raised Movrekt, and in England, so it was all still pretty new to her. 

He put on a blue knit beanie to cover the now-vivid shade of his hair, and a comfy-looking sweater that matched it. Chivaka wore her leather jacket, less against the spring chill and more because if they were going to be spied on by the Movrekt, she wanted that edge. 

And it helped her to hold herself together, if she was being honest. 

Outside of the safety of warded dwellings, she was Chivaka West, Movrekt soldier and second to head of House Harkesh. She was practical, fearless, frightening. She had to be. 

She wasn’t comfortable being alone with herself right now. But Eben knew something of what she was capable of, how ruthless she could be. It comforted her that they both knew another side of each other. She knew Eben understood what it meant to shed one personality, one outfit, for another, not just out of necessity, but because both personalities were real. 

In fact, it might be even more profound, for him. 

They hopped a fence, leaving Darkhan land but not the woods, and found a hard-packed foot trail to walk along. 

“Where are we going?” she asked. 

“I found this place last fall, when things were getting really crazy, and I needed to wander off somewhere and think. You can walk along the old train tracks. It’s so beautiful out here.” 

The overgrown tracks crossed the trail not far along. It was beautiful. Wildflowers grew everywhere, even between the tracks, and woods surrounded them on either side. They passed a place where the hill had had to be cut away, and the rocks were showing their angular faces. The rain of the night before dripped down from the forest floor above. Eben stopped and stared at it with bright eyes. He just stared, for more than a minute. 

“Soften the edges,” he muttered. 

“What are you thinking?” asked Chivaka, coming up beside him. 

“I think I wrote a poem.” He continued on along the path, but his eyes were no longer quite looking at the scenery around them. 

“What, just now? I don’t believe it…can I hear it?” 

“Ok, here it is: 

_Pillowy mosses_

_Grow on the cliff side,_

_Drinking the water_

_That drips from the ledges._

_Faces and angles,_

_Lines and edges._

_Weeds in tangles,_

_Lichens and grasses,_

_Dead leaves in masses,_

_Soften their edges.”_

Chivaka was quiet for a minute. “That’s amazing,” she said. “I didn’t know you were a poet.” 

“Among other things,” he said, smiling. 

“Oh, yes. Scientist, healer, sorcerer, sculptor, coder. Is there anything you can’t do?” 

“Well, there’s things I can’t do _yet._ ” 

Oh, she loved him. 

…Wait. What? 

And in the next moment, she also realized they’d stepped out over a lot of empty air. 

They’d come upon a deep gully with a wide stream through it. The tracks ran on a metal frame bridge across the space. Eben and Chivaka had been so deep in conversation that they were out on the stone support at one end before she noticed. She gasped, and held his hand tightly. 

“What’s wrong? You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” he laughed lightly. 

“Um…well…I kind of am. There’s just so much space! I’m not used to there being so much space under me.” She looked around cautiously. “It’s beautiful, though.” 

“Chivaka, you are a half-dragon. You’re descended from people with wings, and you have extraordinary balance. You will be fine.” He took her hand, and led her ahead across the wooden ties. 

She looked at him. He was laughing at her. Not overtly, but she could hear the vibrations, see the twinkle in his eyes. She’d been laughed at before; she usually hated it. But there was something different about this. He wasn’t laughing as if he thought it gave him some kind of advantage over her, or as though he were superior. Just soft and gleeful and warm between the two of them, Movrekt and Darkhnit. 

She burst out in her own set of giggles, nothing to do with Eben’s humor and everything to do with her own situation—standing on top of a bridge with a dragon who was once her enemy but who was the kindest person she had ever met. 

Then in that moment, she lost her balance, slipped and dropped—into Eben’s arms. He had caught her. 

She was paralyzed for a moment, both with the fear of the drop below, and the knowledge of advantage lost—she had learned that this was a place you should avoid being, in a position of weakness; learned from dates who had tried to take that advantage. _But he wouldn’t,_ part of her spoke up against the fear. 

He was still laughing lightly. “For the most promising gunslinger of the Moverekt families, you don’t have great balance,” he teased, as he set her back on her feet, then took her hand again to lead her to the other side. 

She looked at his eyes, their dark brown still sparkling, open and honest as always. “Thank you,” she said, for many reasons. 

The tracks went on through the forest, and the sun shining through the maple leaves gave a green glow to everything below them. The warmth of his hand still in his was comfortable. She felt okay again. 

“How are you so good at people?” she asked. 

“Sometimes I’m not,” he said, eyebrows hiking up. “I don’t get along with everyone, but a lot of the time, I try. I try to be honest and honorable and not make anybody’s day any worse than I have to. I have to give credit for a lot of it to the things my father taught me.” 

“Like what?” 

Eben looked off into the trees as he thought. “It’s easier to understand the world from the bottom up, he always used to say. It’s easier to relate to other people’s problems when you have enough of your own. But even if you don’t, you can still put yourself in their shoes, it just takes a little more effort. He taught me to pay attention to what was going wrong in other people’s lives. He taught me that I was going to live a long time and I was going to have a strong body and that no matter how much ended up going right for me, I should always remember what it meant to be small and helpless in a world that didn’t like me much, sometimes. He told me, there will always be people living that. So find them, help them, whenever you can.” He laughed a bit. “Never thought it’d be Movrekt soldiers I found living that life.” 

“He sounds wonderful, your father.” 

“He was. Always telling stories. Always teaching. Always helping, and getting other people to help. I can still hear him telling the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby in his own sort of way.” 

“I don’t know it,” she told him curiously. 

“Well, don’t see any reason why you would, really,” he said. “It’s very human, and it’s _very_ American. And when you get right down to it, it’s really terrifically _Black._ ” 

“Well, I’d expect so, if there’s a baby made of tar in it.” 

“It isn’t the tar baby that’s so much about being Black, as it is the briar patch that’s about being Black,” he said. “This is how my daddy explained it: We are all born right down there in that briar patch, just like fish was born in the creek.” His voice did a fascinating lilting thing, as he remembered, as if he were communing with the ghost of his father. “When the fish come back to spawn it looks to us like chaos, but they know what they’re doing. They know what they gotta do to survive. The people at the bottom, they’ve got knowledge too. No one’s gonna help ‘em but each other. Unless they’re tricked into it. And that is what Brer Rabbit does best.” 

“Tell me the story,” Chivaka begged. 

Eben did, and as he told it, he was someone else again, not the scientist Eben with his precisely average accent and mild demeanor, not the healer and mage, Ava, with her easy smile and graceful motions. Instead he was, Chivaka supposed, his father’s son, proud of his roots and eager to share them. 

“That’s amazing,” she said. “I think you should tell his stories more often.” 

“Maybe I should.” 

“So how did the son of a preacher get to be a scientist?” she asked, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. 

“You need to believe in something to make it in the field,” he said. “You need a reason to keep at it until something succeeds, and I believe in humanity. They say the Darkhnit worship humans, and some of us do, but I’d prefer to say that I have faith in the human race as a whole. I have faith in Earth’s future, and what humans can do with it, with our help.” 

“That almost… makes sense.” 

“And I’m not ruling out the possibility of any of their gods being real, either,” he continued. “The way my dad talked about Jesus, I really hope that guy is out there, looking out for us. I don’t claim to know, myself. But I can hope.” 

“It’s so easy for you to admit that you don’t know things,” she commented. “In the Movrekt, we never did that. Just… wonder about the universe. There was always something else to be talking about. Something practical. Something with a concrete purpose.” 

“That’s strange to me,” he said. “Science, my kind of science, is always about a question. Something specific you don’t know, something you’d like to know. That’s the only way to find things out. The only way to get things done.” He smiled at her. “Always did want to know more about the Movrekt. There are a lot of things we think we know about them, about you, in the Darkhnit. But if I went around assuming that was all there was, I’d’ve missed a hell of a lot of the things that you’ve taught me.” 

That eased some of her worry over how far ahead of her he sometimes seemed. He knew so much, it was true, but he was here with her. He had sought her out, and not just for her body, as so many others would have done. 

She smiled. “Anything else you’d like to know?” 

“Nothing right now about the Movrekt in general,” he answered. “You in particular, though—I’m always curious about you.” He looked down, self-conscious. 

“Yeah?” she asked softly. 

He thought for a moment before he asked, “What kinds of movies do you like?” 

“Oh, heists, mysteries, horror, if it’s clever. Anything, really, if it’s got a clever twist.” She paused, thinking. “I guess I always have been ready, a little bit, to suddenly see the world differently. I suppose I always knew the Movrekt were crafty and liars, and that that meant they were hiding things from me.” 

“I’ve always kind of been a Disney guy, myself,” Eben said with a little self-mocking laugh. 

“Oh, that makes complete sense,” she told him. “You are such a Disney princess.” 

“But which one?” he asked, eyes twinkling. 

“Rapunzel, maybe. Artist. Curious mind. Gentle but defiant spirit. Magic hair.” 

He grinned. 

“And you have this thing where you’re fearless about some things some of the time, but other times you get scared, and you’re not afraid to show it.” 

His smile got smaller, but no less genuine. 

She narrowed her eyes a little. “What are you afraid to ask?” 

“Do you really think I’m beautiful?” tumbled out of his mouth. “As Ava, I mean.” 

She curled her arm tight around his, trying her best to reassure. “As Ava, as Eben, as anyone you want to be. You are beautiful. I might not want you the way someone else might, but I always want to look at you.” 

He gave a little happy sigh. “It’s mutual,” he said. “For the record.” 

She felt like maybe, it didn’t matter how young she was, how old Eben was. They both had their own contributions. Their own ways they were wise. 

And they were both going to do what they could to help out the helpless. Right now she felt like between the two of them, they could do anything. 

* * *

When they walked into the Darkhan manor, there was someone talking to Isis in the entryway. Someone jarring—out of place, but familiar. It took Chivaka’s brain a moment to compute. Senda. Her grandfather’s secretary. 

“What is she doing here?” Chivaka muttered, low enough that only Eben could possibly have heard her. As far as she knew, Senda had stayed at Tanot’s house, was serving as Hale’s secretary now. 

Senda’s eyes widened as she came in. The servant bowed her head. “Miss Chivaka,” she began, then corrected herself. “Lady West.” 

Something had changed, then. Senda was addressing Chivaka as her mistress, as her head of House, or near enough. 

“What is it, Senda?” Chivaka asked, head held high, as if this was only expected, as she’d seen her grandfather do so many times. 

“Please believe, my lady, that I stayed in the house only to spy on the usurper, Hale, for you. I meant to pass along information through the reborn House Harkesh, where I could. But this would not wait. Hale, and some of those loyal to the old House Harkesh, have decided that the time has come to execute the wounded in the hospital. They’re gathering now.” 

A bolt of panic shot through Chivaka. She wanted to ask so many questions, ask if Senda was sure, but Senda was taking a careful breath. Chivaka had never heard her speak this much together, and she was clearly not done, so Chivaka waited for the rest, dread heavy in her chest and anxiety pricking at her nerves. The worst was happening. They’d failed. 

“Miss Chivaka—my lady—I know how you grieved for your father, and railed against our Lord Reseda for executing him. I thought it was most important that you had a chance to stop your uncle from dying the same way.” 

Her careful— _caring_ —tone broke through the frozen cycle of thoughts. They hadn’t failed yet. There was still a chance. 

“Yes, thank you, Senda,” Chivaka agreed. “I’m in your debt. You are welcome to a place in the reborn House Reseda, if you wish.” She heaved a breath, willing herself to focus on what came next. “They found out about the magic lessons, they must have,” she said. “They want to act before it goes too far.” She looked at Eben, who looked as torn as she felt. “Maybe we shouldn’t have.” 

“No,” said Isis. “If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. At least this way, they have a little more means of defending themselves.” 

“What do we do?” Chivaka asked Isis. 

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Isis chided. “You’re head of House, and I’m retired, really, this time. I know you two. I know what you’re capable of. So I’m going to let the young ones figure it out, this time.” She offered Senda her arm. “Can I show you to a room? I’m thinking you might like to rest.” 

“Thank you, Lady-Mother Harkesh,” Senda answered. She reached out, but looked afraid to touch the offered arm. 

“Just Isis,” Isis offered, wrapping Senda’s hand around her arm and patting it. “I had just about enough of the ‘Harkesh nobility’ nonsense the first time around. And I wasn’t even properly part of the House then!” 

Chivaka watched them walk away, and felt lost. 

“Come on,” Eben said, pulling off his woolly hat and letting his cotton candy hair fluff up. “I’m not sure how exactly this is going to work out, but I believe it will. And Ava Kesh needs to be there, so I’m going to get ready.” 

Ava had her own stash of makeup now, in the powder room nearest the servers, and when Ava didn’t close the door behind her, Chivaka followed her in, trying to figure out how on Earth they could manage to get this to end in anything but disaster. 

This had to happen just when things were going so _well._

Ava was in a hurry, dabbing highlighter onto strategic points on her face, but she still spared a look for Chivaka. “What are you thinking?” she asked. 

She was safe, here, with Ava. She didn’t have to wear her armor here. 

“I’m a fraud,” Chivaka answered. “How can I be head of a Movrekt house, plus second and bodyguard to head of the first House? I don’t have any idea how to pull this off. I’ve been fooling everybody. I’ve been fooling myself.” 

Ava sighed, and stopped blending to look Chivaka in the eye. “Believe me, Chivaka,” she said, “that’s sometimes just how things get done. You try something, make something up, and then believe it with your whole heart. You pick a hypothesis and you carry it through to the end of the experiment, right or wrong. That way, if nothing else, you learn something. And you take that, and you start again. My take on adulthood is a little different than Isis’s. It’s when you learn to keep doing that over and over again. And you are capable of so much.” 

She was learning that. It was a hard lesson. There was so much she _could_ do. But where was the so elusive _should?_ Did it exist at all? 

If she wanted direction, she’d have to give it to herself. 

“Okay,” she said. “I know we need to stop this. But it’s happening, tonight, maybe soon.” 

Ava’s expression solidified, determined. “We have to try to get there first.” 

There were so many ways this could go, so many elements she could bring to it. “I’d say we should bring help, fighters, but it won’t do at all to bring Silver Horns into this. We just finished a war between them and the Movrekt. We don’t want to start another. Ezri is away. And the Red Glade stepped out when the wounded asked them to.” She straightened her jacket, patting the places where she kept her guns, when she was armed. “Do you think my two guns will make that much difference?” 

“I think the two of us will,” Ava said. “Guns or no.” She finished her lips. “Do you want to stop for them?” 

“Yes,” Chivaka answered after a short hesitation. “If I don’t have them on me, they’ll know we’ve got some trickery planned.” 

Ava nodded, businesslike, and went for the door. “They’re in Isis’s safe?” 

“Yeah. You can grab a change of clothes, while we’re over there.” 

Ava had something up her sleeve. Chivaka could insist on knowing what it was, or she could trust Ava and focus on turning whatever situation they found to their advantage. 

Chivaka trusted Ava. 

* * *

The strike team caught up to them in the hospital entryway. About ten strong, heavily armed. Two against ten. But they had many tricks between them that these soldiers never dreamed of. She hoped that would be enough. Chivaka turned and stood, facing them, Ava at her shoulder. 

“Lady West,” Jolarin said in sarcastic greeting. He’d been a House Reseda foot soldier, same as her, but now he was Hale’s second. “Defending these reheated leftovers? Come on. Surely you realize by now that you can’t scrape together enough force under your House Reseda banner to challenge us. Especially not if you insist on including all this dead weight.” He waved his hand at the doors to the ward. 

“They’re not dead weight,” Chivaka insisted. “You don’t want to do this. The Movrekt have lost enough.” 

She’d recognized Jolarin first, since he was House Reseda and had vividly red hair. But Destan Ael, big, blond, old-guard Harkesh, she’d tangled with him enough times. And there was another… 

_Spy_ , part of her mind warned her, before he stepped out, eyes on Ava. Cryos Kane. Dark hair, nondescript. Nash’s old spymaster. Just looking at him, now that he’d drawn attention to himself, made her feel as if she’d touched something slimy. Made her want to rub her hand against her jeans. 

“Eben Keth,” Cryos said. He turned to Jolarin. “That’s no Red Glade healer. He’s in disguise, but he still smells the same. He’s Darkhan. Copper Eye.” 

“Out!” Jolarin snapped, waving his gun. “This is no business of yours, Copper Eye.” 

“You can’t do this, you can’t kill all of them!” Ava… Eben… she wasn’t sure, he’d lowered his voice now to the way it was when he was Eben, but it also shook, so maybe it wasn’t entirely intentional. 

Jolarin just laughed. “You can’t stop us. Face me and fight, or run, those are your choices.” 

“I choose neither, thanks,” Eben replied, although his eyes darted in panic. He radiated fear. 

It was the kind of thing that, at one time, Chivaka might have called cowardly behavior. She knew better now. The others here did not. 

Jolarin smiled a shark’s smile, all teeth. “You’re no soldier, but your code of honor won’t let you run, is that it? Would you rather go back in, die with the wounded, trying to save them?” He shook his head. “Stupid Darkhan, refusing to see how rough life really is.” 

Eben glared across at him, eyeing his gun warily. “Oh, you’re going to show me rough, are you? It’s all you know, isn’t it.” 

“Maybe so. I think I will drag you in for the slaughter.” He waved his gun, seeing how Eben feared it. “Save you for last. Make you watch.” 

Chivaka’s heart froze in her chest. She’d been afraid that she was going to watch Eben die of a bullet, here and now. But now she feared worse. She feared that she was about to watch as Eben broke, as he witnessed the slaughter of the people he’d befriended, the people he’d worked so hard to save. 

Chivaka had seen what news of Lira’s death had done to Ezri, and _Ezri_ hadn’t been made to watch. Chivaka’s hands twitched, claws ready, inching towards her guns, ready to fight to the end to stop Eben from being hurt that way. Tortured in a way perhaps more effective than Nash’s blades. 

Eben shook his head, looking conflicted, and he spoke as if to himself. 

“Oh no, Brer Fox, _please_ don’t throw me in the briar patch.” 

It was just a mutter. Barely audible. And she was standing right next to him. It was a signal to her that he meant to go in, that he had a plan. 

He was going to fight. In his own way, he was challenging these Movrekt. 

If anyone could survive this, make this mess right, it was Eben Keth. 

Or Ava Kesh. Either one. 

She felt a surge of hope, of warmth, that her beautiful enbyfriend could still pull this off, even compromised by Cryos. 

“What? You’re having second thoughts now?” Jolarin chuckled, giving Eben a little shove to get him going. 

“I’ll go, okay, I’ll go,” Eben said, head down. 

“You too, your highness,” Jolarin said in Chivaka’s direction. “You’ve gone soft because of this Darkhan? We’ll straighten you out again. Hale would love to have you back in House Reseda, where you belong. But first things first. Destan, get her guns. Make sure she doesn’t try anything.” 

Chivaka didn’t want to give them up, but she wanted even less to have Destan’s hands on her, or to put Eben, unarmed as he was, in more danger. She had to follow his lead, trust him to know what he was doing. And she did trust him. So she unsnapped her holsters and handed her guns over, feeling the weight of them pass from her hands. She hated it, but she did it. 

Destan glared, even as he took them. “This is the day you pay for shooting me in the back. One way or another.” 

She smiled proudly. “Maybe so,” she said. “But you’ll never make me regret it.” She darted towards the ward ahead of the other Movrekt. 

As they passed a desk, the humans’ eyes widened and hands strayed towards phones when they saw drawn guns. Chivaka could read them, and the Movrekt team’s glowering wouldn’t stop them. 

Eben’s tiny head-shake did. 

That was a kind of power they didn’t teach you in the Movrekt. Trust. Eben was trustworthy. The humans of this hospital knew Eben, apparently well enough that even in disguise—or at least, dressed differently—a little shake of his head was all it took to get hospital security to let the whole group pass unmolested. 

Or perhaps they’d just seen enough of half-dragon strength to know when they were out of their league. After all, they’d had a whole ward of them here, since the war. 

The half-dragons in the ward didn’t pay any particular attention as Chivaka and Ava entered, but when the strike team followed, the whole room full of wounded Movrekt looked up to see the group they knew to be their executioners. Chivaka saw bleak expressions all around her. But as she looked harder, looked at them as she thought a Red Glade healer might, she saw that some had fire in their eyes, fight, determination. 

Chivaka could feel the tingle of ambush from both sides now. Hot and cold. Adrenaline and caution. Readiness, balanced on a knife’s edge. She remembered this. How it could turn on you at a moment’s notice. How everything could go your way or fall apart, in less time than it took to take a breath. 

So many potential wrong moves. No time to waste on thinking. That was how the Movrekt thought, how she’d been taught to think. 

Sure enough, the Movrekt force didn’t wait, didn’t hesitate in their mission. They raised their guns, pointing them at Chivaka and Ava, who were able-bodied enemies of the Movrekt, clearly the biggest threats. 

The decisions that had brought Chivaka here stood crystalline in her mind, the militant obedience she’d been taught, the surrender that had changed everything. She had no idea which way to jump now. 

A clear note broke through the trapping lattice of her thoughts. Ava—and now it was Ava, Chivaka was almost certain—had raised her voice in a high, sure note which called to all the air in the room, brought it to attention, formed it into a rigid mass in the center of the room. 

She could see what the sound was doing. The Movrekt, untrained in magic, could not. They only knew that a mage was casting. They pointed their guns at Ava, and fired. 

Chivaka could only wish to Bahamut that the untested spell worked. 

The bullets shrieked through the air, shattered the protective layers—but the impact still slowed them. Chivaka could see the tiny bits of metal now, pushing through the air, air gone thick and dense like jelly. The bullets tumbled under their own weight, and fell to the floor. 

Ava glanced at Padric, and Padric took up the thread of the melody an octave down, keeping the air between them and the strike team still. 

Ava took up a new song, a new spell, and looked to Chivaka. 

Chivaka saw his glance, but at the same time, she saw Jolarin move. He was coming closer, testing the boundaries of the shield. 

Chivaka had to make a choice, to react to the threat he presented or follow the lead of Ava’s magic, which was calling hers to join. Jolarin stepped around the edge of the shield, pointing his gun at her. It would be a good shot. An easy shot. He could kill her if she did not act to prevent it. 

Ava’s song drew her in like a tornado, and Ava had a plan, and that plan could save these people, Chivaka’s people. 

Chivaka’s magic flared up, and her voice made harmony with Eben’s in a chant not so different from the one they’d used to change Ava’s hair. But this one reached into the strike team’s guns, misused the purposeful shape of the metal to channel fire, to burn all the potential out of all the black powder in all of their rounds and melt the bullets into their chambers. 

Jolarin fired in the middle of the spell. But his bullet, short of powder now, barely stung as it bounced off her jaw. 

Maybe they could do this. 

Casting in concert with Ava was similar to following Ezri’s lead, but quicker, more deft, more exciting. Chivaka’s heart beat with it, knowing the tide had turned in their favor. But still, they were a handful of injured Movrekt, and Chivaka and her Copper Eye friend, against ten elite and able-bodied Movrekt soldiers. Cryos had already unsheathed his claws, and was starting towards the two of them. 

“It’s not just us you’re fighting,” Ava warned them. “You shouldn’t underestimate the survivors you came here to kill.” 

Cryos smiled, shook his head. “We’ve had eyes here, of course. You’ve been teaching them magic, yes, but just parlor tricks. No more than little puffs of air.” His eyes flicked to Padric. “Maybe one or two of them have learned enough to follow your lead, but still. I think they will be more hindrance to you than help.” 

Ava’s only reply was to the wounded behind her. Her voice filled the room again, as she spoke to all her students here. “Air magic can be vicious, if threatened. It can stop many other kinds of magic. It can steal your voice. Your breath.” 

Woven between her words was a dark rhythm, the base for a spell that they all knew enough now to complete. 

Chivaka could see the light dawning in their eyes, in her uncle’s eyes. Ava was telling them about the power she’d given them, making them aware of how much it could do. 

The voices began one by one, at first, and then rose in a crescendo all around them as the wounded gained confidence in the spell. 

No wonder the Red Glade grew as their magic spread. Perhaps that was the real reason Nash had agreed to the treaty that had outlawed powerful magic. Perhaps this was why he had pushed until even small magic was unusual in the Movrekt. 

Magic pulled people together. Brought them closer. Brought them into tune. 

Unified, the song grew stronger. The strike team began to look worried, and then began to gasp for breath. 

Cryos started to choke, first. 

It wasn’t enough to stop Jolarin, who darted forward, claws out, now making for the nearest of the wounded, the one whose eyes were on him. But Padric stepped in the way, blocking the swing with the remains of his right arm and counterattacking with the claws of his left. 

“You think we will make the Movrekt weak?” Padric asked Jolarin, still not letting him breathe, patting his face to make sure he was conscious and listening. “Ineffectual? You think we’ll dilute your power? No, letting us rejoin you wouldn’t do you any harm. It wouldn’t bring you down. I’ll show you what can stop the Movrekt,” he hissed in Jolarin's face, “if you’re not very careful. I’ll show you what fighting us would get you. But not yet. Now you have a chance. One chance. To stop this and leave us be.” 

Padric stepped back and let Jolarin gasp for breath. 

Jolarin glared, pushing himself up off the ground. “I will never stand by and let that happen.” 

“I believe you.” Padric’s voice was utterly cold. Jolarin’s rasping breaths stopped once more. 

He clawed at his throat but Padric’s eyes were hard. They stayed on the man for several long seconds after he’d stopped moving. 

Chivaka understood that she’d given him the conviction to kill for this cause. He knew which way the wind was blowing, and that he had another position to fall back on, should this fail. 

Chivaka understood that her uncle was old Movrekt, that he knew what he had to do to gain respect. She didn’t like that about him. She also knew she needed someone with those skills. 

Someone who could make a roomful of Movrekt silent like this. All focused on him, and the body in front of him. 

“We are not defenseless,” Padric told the remaining soldiers. “We are not disposable. Be quiet, and listen.” 

The rest of the patients seemed to have reached a consensus that they’d only take the soldiers’ air if they persisted in moving forward. None of them did, now. One or two had already run. Cryos was nowhere to be seen. Destan looked at Chivaka and Jolarin's body and Padric, in turn, with frightened eyes. 

She gave him a cheerful little wave. 

He glared, and then he left. The others followed, weaving a little on their feet. 

“What now?” a woman, formerly House Viresca, if Chivaka recalled correctly, asked. “They won’t take us back. Where do we go?” 

Chivaka stood in a sea of faces, all lost, all looking to her. It was time for her to step in, to set the rhythm for the others to march to. 

It was time for her to become a Head of House. 

“I don’t recognize their authority,” Chivaka told the surrounding half-dragons. “I don’t recognize Hale as lord of House Reseda, or Cryos or Destan as having any position in any house. I am the granddaughter and heir of Tanot Reseda, former lord of House Reseda, and I intend to rebuild. Any of you, all of you, are welcome to join me.” 

“What would that look like?” a fellow missing both legs asked. “I mean, just to begin with, Hale is camping in your grandfather’s property here, dealing with his holdings.” 

That was a problem. It was hard to be a Head of House without a house. Ezri had solved the problem neatly with her trailer. She did things her own way, and made the Movrekt dance to her tune. But Chivaka only knew how to be a Movrekt… plus a few extra tricks. 

A Movrekt used anything they could get their hands on. 

Chivaka spoke for Ezri. Ezri had rejected Nash’s lifestyle. 

And his home. 

“The Lady Harkesh has gifted me her predecessor’s manor,” she told them with conviction, “since she has no need for it. Until we can retake the properties my grandfather intended me to inherit, the Reaper’s home will serve well enough, I think.” 

It had stood empty but for the servants ever since the Reaper and his sons had died, no one who wanted it quite brave enough to stake a claim on what had once been his. 

She hadn’t had a use for it, until now. 

That proclamation made eyes around the room widen. But they nodded, as if it was only right. 

“There are people at the old Darkhan compound who would welcome you, too, if you’d rather,” Ava added. 

“You’re free to stay or go,” Chivaka told them. “I’ll have some rooms made ready at both places, when you decide.” 

Padric was the only one who followed them out directly. “How will we get the factions to come back to us?” he asked. “We’ve got some tricks, yes, but we’re not exactly brimming with manpower. I might have magic but I still have a stump where my hand used to be.” 

“I have a plan,” Chivaka told him. “But I’ll need time.” She knew she still had to lean on the old ways of doing things. “If you’re loyal to me, I promise, you’ll be rewarded. In a way that others will see.” 

Padric eyed her with wary admiration. “You’ve learned some things, sprog,” he said. 

“I’ve learned a lot of things,” she agreed. “Will you go to the house for me? Tell the servants a friend of Gabiya’s sent you. They’ll get the rooms ready.” 

“You’re full of surprises,” he said. “Yeah, all right. I’d kind of like to roll around on the Reaper’s bed, but I have a feeling that if I don’t save that honor for you, I’ll get disappeared for certain this time.” 

Chivaka decided to let him think that. She watched him go with a sort of heavy, dark humor in her heart. 

She wanted the trailer, she wanted its safety. But Ezri had it today, Chivaka wasn’t sure where. They walked through the edge of the woods, vaguely in the direction of the compound, but Chivaka wasn’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate the company of those that lived there, not right now. 

“What do you need?” Eben asked her, concern coloring his tone. 

Chivaka suddenly and violently tore off her jacket, no longer able to stand the smell of it, dead animals and blood, or the feel of it, heavy and smothering. The long-sleeved tee under it followed, torn off along with her shoulder holsters, and soon she was shivering in the cool air of the spring evening, in only a camisole above the waist. 

“Hey, hey,” he said. “Do you want my sweater instead?” 

“Why would you offer me anything, I’m a killer and a leader of killers, and I know that’s not you. I know you’re a peaceful person. You preserve life, it’s what you do.” 

“No. Chivaka. We’re not so different.” 

“Everything about us is different! You’re a scientist, a healer, a teacher, an artist. You build, you bring together. I’ve spent my whole life learning to fight, to kill, and even once I was shown the way out of that life, out of the Movrekt families, I chose to dive back in.” 

Eben sat down on a nearby rock. “No,” he said. “You know, I’ve always known creation and destruction were two sides of the same coin. Whenever we build something, we have to destroy what was there to begin with, first. There is no one who creates without destroying as well.” 

“Clever words,” she said. “But death is still death.” 

“Yeah,” he said. “And Padric killed today. And I gave him the tools to do that, in full knowledge of what those tools could do, and what he would most likely do with them.” He held his arms out in a shrug. “That was on me. What you did today, Chivaka, was take the aftermath of that and start building a new House Reseda. You created. I destroyed.” 

She shivered. She couldn’t speak yet, and let him continue. 

“All of us have days when we do one more than the other. Because it’s necessary. Both sides of the coin are necessary. There’s no world where creation exists without destruction.” 

“I’m afraid of what I’m capable of,” she told him. 

“Of course you are,” he said. “You think I’m not terrified of what I did? Of what the magic I taught them can do?” 

Oh. He was scared. Chivaka could see it; he was letting it show. He wasn’t ashamed of it. She remembered that moment on top of the old railway bridge, the light teasing for her fear of heights. He would never truly think less of her for her fear. She’d known that, then, from the warmth in his eyes. But now she knew they could be afraid together. 

She sank down onto the rock beside him, curling into his side. He wrapped a warm arm around her. 

She was allowed comfort, with him, despite all she’d done, despite all the darkness she held in potential. She was allowed to be warm, and she was allowed to be cold. They weren’t mutually exclusive. 

“Seriously, do you want my sweater?” he said. 

“Nah,” she replied. “It’s comfier with you in it.” 

He laughed lightly, and things were okay. Things were pretty good. 

* * *

It was a complex piece of spellwork that Chivaka was building, and by the end of it, she’d brought in not just Eben, Ezri and Isis to help with it, but a number of other casters from the Red Glade. It had a complex structure, and a delicate balance of air and fire working in harmony. 

The resulting gold bracelet engraved with Draconic writing was small, unassuming. It didn’t look like it could contain something so impressive as the spell she’d intended. 

“Try it,” Eben prompted. 

“How? It’s not built for me.” 

“Yeah, but we tied it to the West bloodline, right? Using you as a baseline. And it doesn’t have to go on a wrist to work, I think.” 

“Oh, I see. Maybe I can make it work.” Chivaka wrapped the bracelet around her left fist and set it near her right hand, because that seemed right for seeing how it was working. She spoke the word that would set it alight. 

A flickering, glowing copy of her right hand sprang into being, sprouting from her left. When she moved her right hand, the fiery copy moved along with it, mimicking it perfectly. 

“Wow,” Eben said softly. “You did it.” 

“I did,” Chivaka agreed, contemplating the hand. It was mostly air magic, really, which her uncle had shown a true propensity for controlling. The air magic was what made it useful for everyday tasks. He’d have to use a separate spell for turning the pages of his books, but he almost preferred the hands-free page turn at this point, anyway, if only because he could use it to intimidate non-casters while simultaneously expressing his boredom with the situation. 

The fire, though, gave the hand shape, gave it flash. Made it visible. If she’d calculated right, it should be able to brush across skin quickly just as gentle and warm as a candle flame, but could do just as much damage if held in place. 

“I think he’ll like it,” Eben said. 

Chivaka ended the spell, turned the bracelet over in her fingers. There was still something about this that made her uneasy, though she knew her work was solid. “Is it bad that I feel like Voldemort right now?” she asked him. 

Eben sighed. “You’re grafting onto a power structure created by the Reaper, who was basically our world’s dark lord. You have to use their own tricks against them to get people on board. But you do your best to be kind when you can, you and Ezri both, and in the long term, that is going to make all the difference. I believe in you.” 

She smiled at him. “Thanks,” she said. “Days like this, that’s all I need to know.” 

Chivaka had stayed in the shadows since she’d joined up with Ezri in her attempts to rebuild House Harkesh. What the new House Harkesh had needed, in the beginning, was for her to be a strong and loyal part of its structure. 

But now, the tide had turned. The wounded had proven their power, proven Ezri right. And Ezri had made an alliance with House Albastru, who had been quietly operating the drug distribution networks, both their own vast network and those smaller branches that had been left in chaos with the fall of the power structures of Houses Harkesh and Reseda. Marijuana distribution operations were set to continue indefinitely under her rule, and certain prescription drugs, but they would be better controlled and monitored for purity, and some of the harder stuff would be slowly phased out. 

Perhaps it was time to raise the profile of Chivaka’s claimed status as head of House Reseda, as well. 

“Does it work?” Ezri asked, coming in to their little workshop in the old Darkhan mansion. 

“I think we’ve got it,” Chivaka told her. “I think this will do a lot to show the Movrekt that the reborn House Reseda is a force to be reckoned with, and remind them that I have loyal people behind me. Do you think I should show them? Is it time?” 

Ezri nodded solemnly. “It’s time. House Harkesh can stand on its own. What we need now is allies.” 

“I’ll always be that,” Chivaka told her. 

The Lady Harkesh smiled. “Good,” she said. “Now, I want to make it clear that I respect your place as head of House Reseda, and that Nash’s residence is now yours. I think it’s time I gave another speech.” 

“Come to the house,” Chivaka invited. “We’ll throw one of those parties, the ones Nash used to do.” 

Ezri chuckled. “I like the way you think,” she said. 

* * *

An invitation to a party at the Harkesh manor was not something to be taken lightly. This was where information was spread, where alliances were formed. 

Everything else might have changed, but few of the remaining Movrekt nobility would refuse this invitation. It had, after all, the pull of the nobility of two Houses, and there was the rumor that they had been giving out knowledge of Red Glade magic, in trade for loyalty and other favors. 

Chivaka put it all together the way she remembered from Nash’s last gala, the one where she’d danced with Prince Mahkai. Food, of course. Laden buffet tables. Wine brought up from Nash’s cellars. It was hers now, Ezri didn’t want it. Music, piped through a sound system she suspected the young prince had been responsible for. 

All this was hers, now. It seemed ludicrous. But then, no one else had wanted this place. No one else had dared. 

Chivaka’s power lay in the fact that she dared. And she was beginning to be comfortable with that. 

Ezri, the Lady Harkesh, stepped up to the head of the grand staircase, and the whole room fell silent. They feared her temper, so like her uncle’s. No one had died of it yet, but there’d been bruised skulls for enough of them that they knew it wasn’t just an act. 

“This was my uncle’s house,” she reminded them all, “and he and his sons and his daughter and his brother are all dead. It falls to me, the last remaining grandchild of Velius, to put it to use. I have other homes, other holdings, among them the home of my father, Nash’s brother, Meronteth Harkesh. The place where I was born. Neither I nor any of the new House Harkesh have any attachment to this place, but it should be put to use, as Lady West has done so effectively today. This house is now the property of Lady West, rightful head of House Reseda. Our first ally.” 

There was muttering, the whole crowd talking amongst themselves. Chivaka walked up to stand beside her. To survey her people. 

“You’re not a true Head of House,” one of them commented, and his fading black eye only made him appear angrier—Zin, Lord Viresca’s heir. 

“You think not? If I am not, then I will be,” she told him. 

Padric stepped up to the third stair, standing between her and the crowd, and following him came several of the half-dragons from the hospital, lining up on the second stair in a show of force, and below that, several of the servants that had once served Nash, but had decided to stay with the house rather than following the House, as it were. 

“I have enough power to do what I mean to do. I intend to destroy the pretender, Hale, and take control of House Reseda and all its remaining property, business, markers and alliances.” 

“I thought you reborn houses were a kinder, gentler Movrekt.” Zin’s voice dripped with contempt for that. “But they say your second killed Hale’s.” 

“Yes. And now he will receive his reward for his service.” 

Padric had already tested the bracelet, learned to use it—in fact, he was wearing it now—but this was theatrics, and the Movrekt organization always thrived on theatrics. Padric stepped up to receive his gift, and Chivaka twitched her fingers in a careless wave. Her uncle muttered the word of command, and the hand of fire sprang up on his wrist like a flame from a lighter. 

The crowd drew back in awe. 

“What is this? What are you bringing into the Movrekt?” 

“Whatever I have to. Whatever I can.” She looked at them haughtily. “This is the way the Movrekt work. You’d know that, if you stopped to think. You made me into a weapon. You told me to have pride. You made me into fire and then you were surprised when I burned you? You’d better be glad, though, because I am the fire that burned you clean. I am the fire that tore down the world and made it anew. And I will give, and I will take, as I see fit.” 

Chivaka West felt the power that rested in her own hands, now, felt her own confidence that if she carefully chose a rhythm for the new House Reseda, that more and more of the Movrekt would start dancing to her tune. 

“Did you bow and scrape to the new Lady Harkesh for this power?” Zin asked her. “You’re no better than us.” 

“Bowing and scraping won’t work on Ezri Va Harkesh. She respects independence. And my power comes from myself.” She looked him in the eye, and she felt the truth of the words she said down to her bones, and she knew that he did, too. 

She dared to take the place she wanted. She dared to ask her friends and family to help. She dared to trust. 

She dared. And that was her power. 

Chivaka descended the stairs, trusting that the soldiers of her House would part before her. 

She could make a show of force, now. She could show these nobles magic. She could show them fire. 

But the crowd parted for her, too. 

Right now, she didn’t need to.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Check out my [novelist blog](http://irenewendywode.tumblr.com) to learn more about my original work.


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